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MOSSES 321 MOTH MOSSES (Musci), a class of small flowerless plants, important in the econo- my of nature, and of great interest in their life history. They are found in all climates, but are most abundant in damp places. They are included with the liverworts. In mountain regions, the thick felts of moss and deep beds of peat soak up the rain, and so prevent floods from sudden storms, and in dry weather supply the streams through weeks of drought. The life of a moss-plant seems to be endless. In some species cushions of marvelous regularity are formed; it enables individual plants to stand erect, and is of great importance in the process of fertilization. The capsules of many mosses are small sacs at the ends of their hair-like stalks. These contain the spores, from each of which when sown there grows in a few days a tiny thread- like plant, the protonema. Buds of young moss plants soon appear on this, and then, as a rule, the thread-plant dies. A moss plant consists of a stem with leaves and roots. The roots will grow out from any part of the plant that is kept dark and damp. Even from a detached leaf, roots and new plants will grow. By their branching habit, and by the death of the older parts, which leave the branches as separate plants, mosses are rapidly prop- agated, indeed in many species the pro- duction of spores is rare. Classification. — There are about 3,000 species, divided into four orders: (1) Bryceae, which include the vast majority of genera. (2) Phascacese. (3) And7-ea- cese, no operculum ; the sporangium opens by 4-8 longitudinal slits. (4) Sphagna- ceas, or bog mosses. MOST, JOHANN JOSEPH, German- American anarchist; born in Augsburg, Bavaria, in 1846; died in Cincinnati, O., in 1906. In his earlier years he served apprenticeship as a bookbinder and trav- eled over Europe as a journeyman of his trade. In 1874, having meanwhile be- come a participant in party politics, he became a member of the Reichstag, from Chemnitz, and at the same time assumed editorship of the "Freie Presse" in Ber- lin, a Socialist publication. His strong leanings toward the anarchist theories of Bakunin caused him to be expelled from the Socialist party in 1879, when he founded the anarchist organ, "Die Frei- heit." After serving a term of imprison- ment for eulogizing the assassins of the Russian Emperor, Alexander II., he came to the United States in 1882. He inime- diately re-established his discontinued "Freiheit" in New York City. Hence- forward he became known as an anarch- ist agitator. MOSTAR, formerly the chief town of Herzegovina, on the Narenta, about 35 miles from the Adriatic, and the terminus of a railway running 27 miles down the valley. It takes its name (Most Star — "old bridge") from a Roman bridge of one arch, 95 feet in span; has numerous mosques, and is the seat of a Roman Catholic and a Greek bishop. Wine is produced, and swords and tobacco manu- factured. Pop. about 17,000. MOSUL, a formerly important town of Asiatic Turkey, in the province of Al- Jezireh (ancient Mesopotamia) ; on the Tigris, opposite the ruins of ancient Nineveh, 200 miles up the river from Bagdad. During the Middle Ages it was a very prosperous city (muslin takes name from this town) ; now its bazars are filled with the manufactures of the West, and almost the only export is gall nuts, from the Kurdish mountains. Mosul was formerly the metropolis of the Meso- potamian Christians (the Nestorians, the United Chaldasans, the Jacobites, etc.), and still contains many Catholic Chris- tians. The town, which existed in 636, enjoyed its greatest prosperity in the 9th century, and onward, till the desolating inroads of the Mongols in the 12th. Then came the Seljuks; and they were followed by the Turks; since then Mosul has steadily declined. Captured by Anglo- Egyptian army, October, 1918. Pop. about 80,000. MOSZKOWSKI, MORITZ, Polish musician; born at Breslau in 1854, he toxired when about 20 the principal Eu- ropean cities as pianist, living for the most part in Berlin and Paris. His suc- cess at the piano was later eclipsed by his work as a composer and his Spanish dances won him a world-wide fame. Among the miscellaneous works produced by him: "Jeanne d'Arc," a symphonic poem; "Boabdil"; and the incidental music to Grabbe's "Don Juan" and "Faust" are the most notable. MOTH, the popular name of a numer- ous and beautiful division of lepidopter- ous insects {Heterocera) , readily distin- guished from butterflies by their antennae varying in form to a point instead of terminating in a knob, by their wings being horizontal when resting, and by their being seldom seen on the wing ex- cept in the evening or at night (though there are many species of moth that fly in the brightest sunshine, and some but- terflies that appear at twilight). Moths are comparatively larger than butterflies and more hairy or downy in character. There are thousands of species, differing greatly in color, form, size, habit and