9. A distinguished French writer, Rousseau, was particu larly fond of mosses. He would often say that they gave an air of youth and freshness to our fields, adorning nature when flowers had vanished. The moss is a useful plant also. The Laplanders protect their humble dwellings with moss, and line the cradles of their little ones with it. May not this explain why a tuft of moss is an emblem of maternal love? Little birds also select the delicate moss for their nests, and squirrels convey it to their winter abodes.

10.

"Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush,
That overhangs a molehill large and round,
I heard, from morn to morn, a merry thrush
Sing hymns to sunrise, and I drank the sound
With joy; and, often an intruding guest,
I watched her secret toils from day to day-
How true she warped the moss to form a nest,
And modeled it within with wood and clay."

11. And now, having described the ferns and the mosses, and illustrated them with drawings, we will conclude the first division of the Flowerless Plants with the following beautiful lines by Eliza Cook, which show very forcibly the wisdom of God in creating different species of plants, as well as in permitting the various degrees of what men call prosperity to different classes in society.

LESSON XXIV.-THE FERN AND THE MOSS.

1. THERE was a fern on the mountain, and moss on the moor;
And the ferns were the rich, and the mosses the poor.
And the glad breeze blew gayly; from Heaven it came,
And the fragrance it shed over each was the same;
And the warm sun shone brightly, and gilded the fern,
And smiled on the lowly-born moss in its turn;
And the cool dews of night on the mountain fern fell,
And they glistened upon the green mosses as well.
And the fern loved the mountain, the moss loved the moor,
For the ferns were the rich, and the mosses the poor.
2. But the keen blast blew bleakly, the sun waxed high,
And the ferns they were broken, and withered, and dry;
And the moss on the moorland grew faded and pale,
And the fern and the moss shrank alike from the gale.
So the fern on the mountain, the moss on the moor,
Were withered and black where they flourished before.
3. Then the fern and the moss they grew wiser in grief,
And each turned to the other for rest and relief;
And they planned that wherever the fern-roots should grow,
There surely the moss should be sparkling below.

4. And the keen blasts blew bleakly, the sun waxed fierce;
But no wind and no sun to their cool roots could pierce;

For the fern threw her shadow the green moss upon,
Where the dew ever sparkled undried by the sun;
When the graceful fern trembled before the keen blast,
The moss guarded her roots till the storm-wind had passed;
So no longer the wind parched the roots of the one,
And the other was safe from the rays of the sun.

5. And thus, and forever, where'er the ferns grow,
There surely the mosses lie sparkling below;

And thus they both flourish, where naught grew before,
And they both deck the woodland, and mountain, and moor.

ELIZA COOK.

LESSON XXV.-LICHENS. (THALLOGENS.)

1. Cenomy ce sporus' su, Ventric use lichen, xxi. 8, woods, 2 in. 2. Cenomy'ce uelica'ta, Delicate lichen, mealy patch, xxi. 8, on rotten rails, in. (a. enlarged). 3. Cenomy'ce rangiferi'na, Reindeer lichen, xxi. 8, woods, 2 in. 4. Licide'a lu'rida, Lurid lichen, xxi. 8, rocky highlands, 3 in. (b. enlarged). 5. Cali'cium chrysoceph'alum, Yellow-head lichen, xxi. 8, lem. col., 3 in. (c. enlarged). 6. Lecano'ra ocula'ta, Mottled lichen, xxi. 8, rocks and earth, w., 2 in. (d. enlarged). 7. Cali'cium capitella'tum, Sulphur lichen, xxi. 8, gr. and y.,in., sandy soil (e. enlarged). 8. Rocel'la tincto'ria, Dyer's lichen (yields a fine purple color), xxi. 8, y. and br., I in. 9. Cetra'ria Islandica, Iceland moss (used in medicine), xxi. 8, ol. br., 2 in.

1. Ar the head of the second division of the cryptogamia are the Lichens,1 a race of tiny2 plants, very common, and yet but little known to the world, though possessed of a beauty by no means inferior to that of gorgeous flowers or lofty trees. Man is but too apt to admire the boundless wealth and beauty

of our great mother, Nature, only where gigantic proportions arrest his attention, or when the stormr of enraged elements makes him aware of his own insignificance.

2. Surely his head was not set on high that he might despise low things! But, te see the beauties with which every corner and crevice is decked, to read the lessons conveyed in Nature's subtlest works, something more than the eye is required. We must be willing and able to listen to every beetle's lowly hum, to greet every flower by the wayside as it looks up to us and to heaven, and to question every stone, every pebble. If we thus look upon the tiny lichens around us, we may here also soon learn that, even in the smallest proportions,

"Not a beauty blows,

And not an opening blossom breathes in vain."

3. Lichens, of which more than two thousand species have been described by botanists, assume a great variety of forms, and vary from a mere speck and shriveled leaf to a branching leafless plant a foot or more in height. In their most common forms, in which they are generally known as rock moss or tree moss, they are fleshy or leather-like substances growing on rocks, trees, and old buildings, forming broad patches of various colors, some being of a bluish gray, and others of the richest golden yellow; some spread upon the ground--and these have usually a much larger growth; some, again, hang from the branches of venerable trees, which they clothe with a shaggy beard of gray; and others shoot up from the barren heath, gray and deformed, but eventually fashioning themselves into tiny goblets, the borders of which are studded with crimson shields.

4. Perhaps the most beautiful of all, as well as the most common, are the wall lichens, some of which spread out like

wrinkled leaflets, while other varieties assume a beautiful circular form, resembling in outline and shape the fairest rose; and of these it has been said, with quaint but truthful words,

"Careless of thy neighborhood,

Thou dost show thy pleasant face
On the moor and in the wood,
In the lane-there is no place,
Howsoever mean it be,

But 'tis good enough for thee."

And, in reality, there are but few surfaces long exposed to wind

and weather which are not soon protected by the warm cover of these lichens. Our roofs and our fences, the trunk of a tree, and the rock in the moors, the earth-capped dike, and the sterile sea-bank-in fact, all places but sparingly supplied with moisture, yet freely exposed to air and light, are clad in ever-varying colors by these beautiful children of Nature. The far-famed Cathedral of Munster may be truly said to be gilded by these tiny lichens.

5. Hardy plants and long-lived are they. Many of them love to live upon a soil little adapted to retain moisture; and of these it has been said that, "Like the lazaroni3 of Naples, they will not work even to live. Carelessly and listlessly they lie in the bright sunshine, and implore with Stoic patience, by their miserable appearance, the pity of passing clouds. In these times of want and drought they shrink and shrivel until nothing seems farther from them than life. Pale and rigid, they are the very images of desolation, and crumble under the hand into impalpable dust. Yet no sooner has an early dew or a soft rain-nay, even a faint mist-merely touched their unsightly forms, than they begin drinking in moisture with amusing avidity, and, lo and behold, ere many minutes are passed, they expand and increase, until, as if touched by a magic wand, they have recovered their fresh, joyful color and youthful vigor."

6. In extent of geographical distribution they exceed even the mosses; and they are met with, in one place or other, from the equator to the poles, and from the sea-shore to the summits of lofty mountains. Humboldt discovered a species of this plant at a height of more than eighteen thousand feet, "the last child of the vegetable kingdom at that unsurpassed elevation, close to the top of Chimborazo ;" and large num bers of small but vigorous lichens are known to spread over the Alps, even close to the eternal snows of Mount Blanc.

Rocks sublime

To human art a sportive semblance bore,

And yellow lichens covered all the clime,

Like moonlit battlements, and towers decayed by time.-CAMPBELL.

7. Another writer has beautifully described these hardy plants as crowning the heights of Snowdon, above the region of clouds and storms.

Where frowning Snowdon bends his dizzy brow
O'er Conway, listening to the surge below,
Retiring Lichen climbs the topmost stone,

And drinks the aerial solitude alone:

Bright shine the stars, unnumbered, o'er her head,
And the cold moonbeam gilds her flinty bed;

While round the rifted rocks hoarse whirlwinds breathe,
And dark with thunder sail the clouds beneath.-Darwin.

8. But lichens are far from being idle intruders upon the domains of solitude, or mere ornaments woven into the bright carpet that covers our earth. From them many articles of food, even for man, and bright dyes, are obtained: the Iceland moss, a species of lichen, is now much used in medicine, especially in pulmonary affections; humbler animals subsist upon these plants; and the well-known reindeer moss sustains for months the life of a whole race of noble animals, without whom a large portion of our globe would be but a desert, unfit for the abode of man. This may here be referred to as one of the many examples that might be cited of that beautiful adaptation which prevails throughout all animated pa

ture.

9.

Reindeer'! not in fields like ours,

Full of grass and bright with flowers,
Hast thou dwelling'; nor dost thou
Feed upon the orange-bough'.

When thou wast at first designed

By the great Creative mind',

Thou for frozen lands wast meant',
Ere the winter's frost was sent';

And in love He sent thee forth

To thy home, the frozen north,
Where he bade the rocks produce

Bitter lichens for thy use.-MARY HOWITT.

10. All lichens are amply endowed with starch; and with this not only most of the cells are filled, but even the walls themselves are mainly composed of it. A leathern-like lichen grows largely in the limestone mountains of Northern Asia, and serves, in times of famine at least, as food for the roving Tartars. In the polar regions of Europe similar lichens are carefully soaked and boiled down to free them of their original bitterness, and then cooked with milk, or baked into bread. Scanty lichens of this kind, which had to be dug out from under sheltering loads of snow, were, not for days, but for whole months, the sole food of the unfortunate navigator Franklin and his companions.

1 LI'-CHEN (usually pronounced li'-kën).

2 TI-NY or TIN'-Y.

LAZ A-BŌ'-NI, a class of beggars and idlers.

14 DROUGHT (drowt), the same meaning as drouth.