ecause they are
all brought to an even surface at the top. Our own velvet is reduced to
such trimness by cutting. But how is the moss trimmed? By what scissors?
Carefullest Elizabethan gardener never shaped his yew hedge more daintily
than the moss fairies smooth these soft rounded surfaces of green and gold.
And just fancy the difference, if they were ragged! If the fibres had every
one of them leave to grow at their own sweet will, and to be long or short
as they liked, or, worse still, urged by fairy prizes into laboriously and
agonizingly trying which could grow longest. Fancy the surface of a spot of
competitive moss!

16. But how is it that they are subdued into that {23} spherical obedience,
like a crystal of wavellite?[11] Strange--that the vegetable creatures
growing so fondly on rocks should form themselves in that mineral-like
manner. It is true that the tops of all well-grown trees are rounded, on a
large scale, as equally; but that is because they grow from a central stem,
while these mossy mounds are made out of independent filaments, each
growing to exactly his proper height in the sphere--short ones outside,
long in the middle. Stop, though; _is_ that so? I am not even sure of that;
perhaps they are built over a little dome of decayed moss below.[12] I must
find out how every {24} filament grows, separately--from root to cap,
through the spirally set leaves. And meanwhile I don't know very clearly so
much as what a root is--or what a leaf is. Before puzzling myself any
farther in examination either of moss or any other grander vegetable, I had
better define these primal forms of all vegetation, as well as I can--or
rather begin the definition of them, for future completion and correction.
For, as my reader must already sufficiently perceive, this book is
literally to be one of studies--not of statements. Some one said of me
once, very shrewdly, When he wants to work out a subject, he writes a book
on it. That is a very true saying in the main,--I work down or up to my
mark, and let the reader see process and progress, not caring to conceal
them. But this book will be nothing but process. I don't mean to assert
anything positively in it from the first page to the last. Whatever I say,
is to be understood only as a conditional statement--liable to, and
inviting, correction. And this the more because, as on the whole, I am at
war with the botanists, I can't ask them to help me, and then {25} call
them names