rich wine, of the growth of Provence, Languedoc, Cividad, &c.—The word, as well as the liquor, is French; some fetch its original from musk; the wine being supposed to have a little of the smell of that perfume; others from musca, a "fly," because the flies are extremely fond of its grapes; as the Latins had their vinum apianum, so called ab apis, from the bees which fed on it.
The way of making muscadine at Frontignac is as follows: They let the muscadine grapes grow half dry on the vine; as soon as they are gathered, they tread and press them immediately, and run up the liquor, without letting it stand and work in the fat; the less occasioning its goodnes.
Muschienbroeck (Peter de), a very distinguished natural philosopher and mathematician, was born at Utrecht a little before 1700. He was first professor of these in his own university, and afterwards invited to the chair at Leyden, where he died full of reputation and honours in 1761. He was a member of several academies; particularly the Academy of Sciences at Paris. He was the author of several works in Latin, all of which show the greatest penetration and exactness in this way. He was also very consummate in the knowledge of law.
Musculi, Mosses, one of the seven families or classes into which all vegetables are divided by Linnaeus in the Philosophia Botanica. The ancients took the moss of trees to be the effect of a disorder or decomposition of the texture of the bark; or at most a kind of little filaments arising from the bark; but the moderns find, by several observations, that mosses are all all real distinct plants, whose seed, being extremely small, is inclosed in little capsules; which bursting of themselves, the seed is carried off by the winds; till, falling into the inequalities of the bark of trees, it is there stopped, takes root, and feeds at the expense of the tree, as moulding does on bread, &c.
What the botanical writers strictly understand by the word mosses, is a class of plants appearing of an inferior rank to the common vegetables; the less perfect genera of which have been supposed to be wholly delicate of flower or seed, or any thing analogous to either, and to consist of simple, similar, and uniform parts; the genera a little above these have some diversity of parts, and carry something that looks analogous to vegetation in the common way, having a resemblance of those parts which serve other plants for their fructification. The more perfect genera of the mosses not only consist of different parts, but have also their appropriated organs containing a pulpy matter, which finally becomes dry, and assumes the form of a fine and subtile powder, composed of granules, each of which is either a seed or a granule of farina, serving for the propagation of the species.
The more imperfect mosses are distinguished from the others by their appearance to the naked eye; they are either in form of a fine lanugo or down covering the surface of different bodies; or else they appear as slender filaments, or foliaceous bodies, floating about in the water; or as filaments of a tougher texture, hanging down from the branches of old trees; or as little shrubs, or single horns, growing erect on the parched earth of mountains and heathy places; or finally, as broad and foliaceous bodies spreading themselves over the dry barks of trees or rocks, without any pedicle or other support.
The more perfect kinds of mosses are found in the shape of small but regular plants, divided into several branches, and clothed with leaves; these are of various forms and structures; some being broad and thin, others slender as hairs; some pellucid, others opaque; some smooth, others hairy. From the axil of these leaves in some kinds, and from the summit of the stalks in others, there arise heads or capsules of various figure and structure, but all unicarpular; some of these are naked, and others covered with a calyptra or hood; some stand on long pedicles, and others are placed close to the stalks. These heads are usually called capsules, which contain their seeds or farina, and their pedicles, fleshy, in the minia, hypna, brya, and polytricha, &c.
These capsules in some are covered with a calyptra or hood; in others they are naked. Of the first kind are the sphagnum, polytricum, minium, bryum, hypnum, fontinalis, and buxbaumia; and of the latter fort, the lycopodium, porella, sphagnum, and phascum.
The substance with which the heads or capsules of all the mosses are filled, resembles either seeds, or the small globules of the farina of flowers, which all resemble seeds of particular figures in miniature. The fructifications of these minute plants seem to be either from these, as seeds falling to the earth; or, according to the opinion of some, they seem to contain only farina in the capsules, which impregnating certain bulbs or nodules in the axil of the leaves, cause them to grow and vegetate, as is seen in some of the larger plants; as in the bulb produced in the axil of the leaves of the dencaria, and of the lilies, and some others. The former opinion, of the powder in the heads or capsules being actually perfect seeds, is the more probable, as the bulbs in the axil of the leaves are found only in some of the hypna, and others of a few other genera; whereas the propagation is as quick and certain in those which have none of them as in those which have; and the want of female parts of fructification, which makes so many deficiencies in the Linnaean system of botany, is easily made up, and the whole explained according to the usual course of nature in other vegetables, by allowing the powder in the capsules to be real seeds, and the small globules on the points surrounding the aperture of the capsule, the farina.
The opinion of the mosses growing from these nodules in the axil of the leaves, or from the impregnated ends of the branches which had received the powder from the capsules, was originally founded on the observing that the trailing or branched hypna annually grew out in length, from the extremities of all their branches, and annually lost as much of the old stalk at the root as they gained of the new at the summit; but it appears from farther observations, that they are real seeds which are contained in form of powder in the capsules; since the brya, and many others, are found growing from small points or spots, which are assemblages of their minute leaves, propagated on the ground, under the old ones, just where the powder of the capsules has fallen; and though it be allowed that the hypna and other trailing mosses do grow from the ends of the branches, yet they may also be produced in form of new plants, from regular and perfect seeds shed from the capsules. It is certain that the brya are by this means propagated and spread into large tufts, and the other genera may also be so propagated, though they have beside a property of increasing by growth of the stalk; which seems no other than the property of many of the large plants to creep at the root, and shoot out in length greatly from the extremities of their horizontal branches, lying on or under the ground, as those spreading parts may more properly be so-called than roots, the fibres pushed out from them perpendicularly into the earth being properly the roots; and it is well known that these plants, though they propagate themselves thus by the root, produce seeds also like the others, by which they may be equally propagated: and this analogy is to be carried yet farther; for as those plants which creep by the roots produce fewer seeds than those which are propagated only by seeds; so the hypna, which are the genus of mosses in which this growth by the stalk is principally observed, are very thinly beset with capsules of seed, and many of them produce but very few in a season; whereas the brya, and other mosses which have not this advantage of growing from the ends of the stalks, are found every year profusely covered with capsules from every tuft; nay, there is scarce any branch which does not produce its capsule. Now, if these capsules contained only a farina capable of impregnating the nodules or the ends of the branches, it is obvious there would be as much of it required for the hypna as for any other kinds of mosses; but if they are real and perfect seeds, it is no wonder that nature has given them profusely to such kinds as are to be propagated only by seeds, and more sparingly to those which are propagated also by the increase of the branches.
To this it may finally be added, that the ferns and other epiphyllous plants approach most of all others to the nature of the mosses; and though it has been suspected by many that the fine powder at the back of their leaves was not seeds, but only a farina, yet it is now well known that it is true and perfect seed; since, under many species of them, there are constantly found new and self-sown plants arising in their first rudiments of leaves and figure, which have plainly grown from the dust or powder fallen from the old plants; and as this is now found to be the case in regard to the ferns, probably it will also appear the same in regard to mosses, when they have been yet farther examined than at present. But whether these grains of powder have the lobes and radicles by which the seeds of larger plants propagate themselves, or whether they grow into plants like the parent ones, in the manner of the lichens, by mere expansion, is a thing that requires farther observation to determine.
Some of the mosses, it is evident, approach to the nature of the plants which have their male and female parts in the same flower, and others to those which have them in different ones.
After all, this tribe of plants, as well as the mushrooms, ferns, and sea-weed, is still imperfectly known. Dillenius, professor of botany at Oxford, was the first who attempted an arrangement of them. In his Catalogus Plantarum circa Giffham, published at Francfort in 1719, and afterwards in his Historia Muscorum, published at Oxford in 1741, he divides the mosses into 16 genera. This arrangement, however, includes the lichens, some of the fuci, and other plants which belong to very different families. The work in question is, notwithstanding, valuable, in having introduced the knowledge of upwards of 200 plants, which were unknown before Dillenius; it is, besides, of all his works of this kind, the best executed, both for the descriptions and figures, and should serve as a model to such authors as intend to publish in detail the history of any particular family of plants.
Micheli, in a work intitled Nova Plantarum Genera, published at Florence in folio in 1629, divides the mosses into two sections, from the figure and situation of their flowers. These sections comprehend together 16 genera, amongst which are improperly arranged, like those of Dillenius, several of the lichens and other sea-weed.
The discovery of the seeds of the mosses, though made by Dillenius in 1719, is arrogated by Linnæus to himself, who did not begin to write till 1735.
In Ray's method, the mosses form the third class; in Tournefort's, they constitute a single genus, by the name of musca, in the first section of the 17th class, which comprehends the mosses, mushrooms, and some of the algae or sea-weed, and is distinguished by the name of algerinae, or plants without seed; the seeds of the mosses not having been detected by Tournefort.
The characteristics of these plants, according to the sexual system, are:
1. Tops without filaments or threads. 2. The male flower, constituted by the presence of the anthera or tops, placed apart from the female, either on the same or distinct roots. 3. The female flowers deprived of the pistillum or pointal. The seeds devoid of both lobes (cotyledones) and proper coverings; so that they exhibit the naked embryo.
In the same system, these plants constitute the second order of the clas's cryptogamia, which contains all the plants in which the parts of the flower and fruit are wanting, or not conspicuous. This order is subdivided into 13 genera, from the presence or absence of the calyx, which in these plants is a veil or cover like a monk's cowl, that is placed over the male organs or tops of the stamens, and is denominated calyptra, from the sexes of the plants, which bear male and female flowers, sometimes on the same, sometimes on distinct roots; and from the manner of growth of the female flowers, which are sometimes produced singly, sometimes in bunches or cones. These distinctions are mostly borrowed from Dillenius, whose excellence in developing this part of the vegetable kingdom Linnæus very readily acknowledges.
The manner of seeding of mosses in general may be more clearly understood from the description of that genus of them which has been traced through all its stages, and to which most of the others, though every genus has its distinct fructification in some respects, yet bear a very great general analogy.
The genus already observed, is that called by Dr Dillenius the hypnum. The species of this are very numerous and common; but that particular one which was the subject of these observations, is the short-branched silky kind, common on old walls; and called by that author in his history hypnum vulgare, sericum, recurvum, capulis eratis cuspidatis.
The head of this moss appears to the naked eye a small, smooth, brownish-yellow, oblong body, of about a ninth of an inch long; this is covered at its upper end with a membranaceous calyptra or hood, in shape resembling an extinguisher or a funnel inverted. When this calyptra is taken off, and the head viewed with a microscope, the surface of it is seen to be ridged with longitudinal striae. The basis of the head is of a deep orange colour, and more opaque than the rest; and the top is bounded by an orange-coloured ring, swelling out something beyond the surface of the contiguous parts of the head. Good glasses show that in this head there are not wanting the parts essential to the fructification of what are usually called the more perfect plants. This ring is truly a monophyllous undulated calyx, within which arise fifteen pyramidal filamented stamens; these are of a pale greenish colour, and are loaded with a whitish oval farina. The stamens all bend toward each other from their bases, and almost meet in a point at the tops. This is their appearance when the head is nearly ripe; and immediately under the arch formed by these stamens, is a cylindric hollow pistillum, through which the farina makes its way, and is dispersed among the seeds in the head; the fruit is a large capsule, filling every part of the membrane which shows itself on the outside of the head, and in most places is contiguous to it; this capsule is filled with perfect and very beautiful seeds; they are round, transparent when unripe, but afterwards opaque, and of a very beautiful green, which colour they retain even when dry.
When this head is first produced from the plant, the stamens are very slender, and stand erect; the head Musci, is scarce any thicker than the stalk, and the calyptra covers it all over, to shield the tender substance of the farina from external injuries. As the farina afterwards swells in the stamens, the seeds in the head increase also in bulk, and by their increase the head is more extended in thickness; and the stamens are by this means separated farther and farther from each other at their bases, but bend inwards toward their points, so as to form a kind of arched covering over the stigma of the pistillum, which is single; and from hence the farina falls as it ripens into the head, and impregnates the seeds.
The principal genera are as follow: Lycopodium, polytricum, bryum, selagines, ulnae, mmium, hyssis, sphagnum, hypna, coniferae, and fontinalis. These are found growing on the barks of trees as well as on the ground. See Plates CCCXXI and CCCXXII.
Mosses, by the inconsiderate mind, are generally deemed an useless or insignificant part of the creation. That they are not, is evident from hence; that He who made them has made nothing in vain, but on the contrary has pronounced all his works to be very good. Many of their uses we know; that they have many more which we know not, is unquestionable, since there is probably no one thing in the universe of which we dare to assert that we know all their uses. Thus much we are certain of with respect to mosses, that as they flourish most in winter, and at that time cover the ground with a beautiful green carpet, in many places which would be otherwise naked, and when little verdure is elsewhere to be seen; so at the same time they shelter and preserve the seeds, roots, gems, and embryo plants of many vegetables, which would otherwise perish; they furnish materials for birds to build their nests with; they afford a warm winter's retreat for some quadrupeds, such as bears, dormice, and the like, and for numberless insects, which are the food of birds and fishes, and these again the food or delight of men. Many of them grow on rocks and barren places, and rotting away, afford the first principles of vegetation to other plants, which could never else have taken root there. Others grow in bogs and marshes, and by continual increase and decay fill up and convert them either into fertile pastures, or into peat-bogs, the source of inexhaustible fuel to the polar regions.—They are applicable also to many domestic purposes: the lycopodiums are some of them used in dyeing of yarn, and in medicine; the sphagnum and polytrichum furnish convenient beds for the Laplanders; the hypnus are used in tiling of houses, stopping crevices in walls, packing up of brittle wares and the roots of plants for distant conveyance.—To which may be added, that all in general contribute entertainment and agreeable instruction to the contemplative mind of the naturalist, at a season when few other plants offer themselves to his view.
Musci, is likewise the name of the 56th order in Linnaeus's Fragments of a natural Method. See Botany, p. 470.