Wood Mosses and Fungi

Besides the water drawn by the roots from the earth and the vapor absorbed by the leaves from the air, the wood mosses and fungi, which abound in all dense forests, take up a great quantity of moisture from the atmosphere when it is charged with humidity, and exhale it again when the air is dry. These humble organizations, which play a more important part in regulating the humidity of the air than writers on the forest have usually assigned to them, perish with the trees they grow on; but, in many situations, nature provides a compensation for the tree mosses in ground species, which, on cold soils, especially those with a northern exposure, spring up abundantly both before the woods are felled, and when the land is cleared and employed for pasturage, or deserted. These mosses discharge a portion of the functions appropriated to the wood, and while they render the soil of improved lands much less fit for agricultural use, they, at the same time, prepare it for the growth of a new harvest of trees, when the infertility they produce shall have driven man to abandon it and suffer it to relapse into the hands of nature.