ISTOYEMBEK. 531 



surface of the sterile soil is covered with it as with 

 snow. How beautifully on the maritime rocks of 

 Pembrokeshire this snow-white lichen contrasts with 

 the rich golden laciniated thallus of Borrera flawcms, 

 with which it grows intermixed ; while the forked 

 Cladonia and the coral-like Isidium, contribute to 

 clothe -the otherwise barren steeps, with a garb which 

 even poetry would fail to imagine in the beauty and 

 delicacy of tint and form that it presents. 



" You are enthusiastic in your Lichens (likings)" 

 said a fair punstress on one occasion to me, as on 

 turning over part of my herbarium before some bota- 

 nical friends, I was descanting on their variety of 

 form and hue. And truly I may be so, for many 

 glorious imaginings many never-to-be-forgotten ex- 

 cursions do I owe to them. They have tempted me 

 on bleak Plinlimmon, where I have gathered the 

 silvery Stereocaulon ; they have led me panting, yet 

 enraptured, winding my course among maritime rocks 

 all day till I was as brown as the sun-burnt Parmelia 

 that I scraped from the granite ridge ; how oft have 

 they lured me to gather the blistered UmbiUcaria, the 

 wiry "Kock Hair," or the pointed sad-coloured Cor- 

 nicularia, on the syenite of Malvern, the sooty Sticta 

 and fringed Gyropliora upon Snowdon and the Ar- 

 renigs, or the curious Socket Solorina, whose apothecia 

 is buried in round pits sunk in the thallus, amid the 

 water-swept ravines of the Glyder Vawr. Still I seem 

 to see the horrid precipice of Craigy-Deryn, near 

 Tal-y-Llyn, all riven and blasted, with its tottering 

 crags, pointed peaks, and broken ledges, stained with 

 the ordure of the myriad screaming sea birds that 

 haunt it, and with the bearded lichenic growth- of 



2 M 2 



