a genus of plants belonging to the cryptogamia clas. See Botany Index. The anthera is operculated, and placed upon a very small apophysis or articulation; the calyptra villous; the flar of the female is on a distinct individual. There are 16 species; the most remarkable of which, natives of Britain, is the commune, or great golden maiden-hair, frequently to be met with in bogs and wet places. It grows in patches; the stalks erect, generally single and unbranched, from three inches to a foot or even a yard high. The leaves are numerous, stiff, lanceolate, acute, growing round the stalk without order, and, if viewed with a microscope, appear to have their edges finely serrated. There are two varieties of this moss: the first has much shorter stalks than the preceding, and often branched; the leaves stiffer, erect, and more crowded; in other respects the same. The other has a stalk scarcely more than half an inch high, terminated with a cluster of linear, erect, rigid leaves, for the most part entire on the edges, and tipped each with a white hair. The filament is about an inch high, and the capsule quadrangular. The female flower, or gem, is of a bright red colour.

The first kind, when it grows long enough for the purpose, is sometimes used in England and Holland to make brooms or brushes. Of the female sort the Laplanders, when obliged to sleep in desert places, frequently make a speedy and convenient bed, in the following manner: Where the moss grows thick together, they mark out, with a knife, a piece of ground, about two yards square, or of the size of a common blanket; then beginning at one corner, they gently sever the turf from the ground, and as the roots of the moss are closely interwoven and matted together, they by degrees strip off the whole circumscribed turf in one entire piece; afterwards they mark and draw up another piece, exactly corresponding with the first; then, shaking them both with their hands, they lay one upon the ground, with the moss uppermost, instead of a matras, and the other over it, with the moss downwards, instead of a rug; and between the two pieces they enjoy a comfortable sleep.