Note 354 — Chapter IX · THE FIRST MENTION OF A FLY

The Oxford Dict. gives, “Alga, a seaweed: in plural, one of the great divisions of the Cryptogamic plants including seaweeds, and kindred fresh-water plants, and a few ærial species,” and “Moss, any of the small herbaceous Cryptogamous plants constituting the class Musci, some of which form the characteristic vegetation of bogs, while others grow in crowded masses covering the surface of the ground, stones, trees, etc.” As “applied to seaweed rare”, I might venture to add either poetical, as in Tennyson’s Mermaid, “in hueless moss under the sea,” or loose and unscientific.