NOYEHBEB. 521 



like the Esquimaux Indians, they have often to endure 

 long fasts, and when the sun in summer blazes some- 

 times for continuous weeks, they seem shrunk up, 

 bleached, and utterly dead. Yet, a single shower 

 awakens their dormant vitality; they prick up, and 

 distend their tJialli, and imbibe the " mountain dew ' 

 till they appear so fat and bloated as to be utterly un- 

 like their former selves " disguised in liquor" as used 

 sometimes to be expressively said of the old race of 

 jovial topers, in these degenerate days put to flight 

 by the incessant assaults of the tee-totallers ! The 

 ciliated Borrerian lichen (Borrera ciliaris,) that often 

 abounds on old ash trees, or hawthorns, giving them 

 in the dimness of morn or eve the aspect of an aged 

 man, "wi' locks o' siller gray," so dilates and swells 

 its fronds in rainy weather, and assumes such a lurid 

 green colour, as to seem at first sight quite a different 

 plant. I recollect, too, a species of the collemate, or 

 gelatinous lichens, which I have many times observed 

 in showery seasons on the walls of Aberystwith Castle, 

 black, fat, and bloated, with brown prominent scutellce; 

 but in a few days after the rain had ceased, not a ves- 

 tige could be discovered of it, even on the closest 

 inspection. In like manner the stones of a court-yard, 

 or steps of a door, appear in dry weather to be com- 

 pletely free from extraneous substances ; but a fall of 

 rain is sure to disclose something green upon the 

 stones, which, if carefully scraped off, and examined 

 with a lens, exhibits the first rudimentary vegetation 

 of the germinating powder of the lichens, which scat- 

 tered in air, has fallen upon the stone, and is now 

 called into existence by the teeming moisture to tinge 

 and carpet the humus where it has been deposited. 



