HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



21; 



COLLECTING AND PEESEEVING. 



No. IX.-LICHENS. 



By the Rev. J. M. Crombie, M.A., F.L.S. 



UCH as it is to be regretted, it 

 cannot be questioned that of those 

 who have devoted themselves to 

 the study of botany, lichenists 

 have always been " few and far 

 between." While flowering plants 

 have had their hosts of enthusiastic 

 students, and while other classes 

 of cryptogamics have had due at- 

 tention paid to them, the study of 

 lichens has, up even to the present 

 time, been but too much neglected. 

 To many indeed the term conveys 

 only some faint and confused idea, 

 and though they know that there are 

 ^ plants so called, they are at the same 

 time utterly ignorant of their nature. 

 Witb flowering plants, ferns, mosses, sea- 

 weeds, and even fungi, they have at least 

 some acquaintance, more or less accurate ; but 

 lichens they generally pass by with indifference, 

 regarding them merely as "time-stains" on the 

 trees, the walls, and the rocks where they grow. 

 Nay, we have even met with some professed, 

 and otherwise well-informed botanists, who, while 

 recognising certain of the larger and more con- 

 spicuous species as lichens, yet fancied that many 

 of the smaller and more obscure species were 

 merely inorganic discolorations. It is certainly very 

 difficult to account for such a state of matters at the 

 present day, when so much attention is being paid 

 to almost every other class of plants. Vainly have 

 I sought either in the nature of the case itself or in 

 my conversations with botanists, for any intelligible 

 solution of such apathy and neglect ; though many 

 good and sufficient reasons have presented them- 

 selves to my mind why they should be regarded in 

 a very different light. It cannot with any show of 

 propriety be objected that lichens are an uninter- 

 No. 94. 



esting class of plants, and consequently undeserving 

 of serious study. So far from this, they are in vari- 

 ous respects as interesting not only as any other 

 class of cryptogamics, but also as many other plants, 

 which occupy a higher and more conspicuous place 

 in the scale of vegetation. Being as it were the 

 pioneers of all other plant life, for which they serve 

 to prepare the soil on the coral islet and the barreu 

 lock, — constituting the most generally diffused class 

 of terrestrial plants on the surface of the globe, from 

 arctic lands to tropical climes, — presenting essential 

 simplicity of structure, being composed entirely of 

 an aggregation of cells, though at the same time this 

 is amply compensated for by endless variety of form, 

 — adorning as they do, with their variously coloured 

 thalli and apothecia, the most romantic and the most 

 dreary situations, — affording in some cases valuable 

 material for the dyer and the perfumer, nay, even 

 for medicinal purposes, — supplying, as some of them 

 do, more or less, nutritious food for man and beast, 

 under circumstances and in regions where no other 

 can be had, — it is very evident that the prevailing 

 neglect of them cannot arise from their being in 

 any way uninteresting, and destitute either of beauty 

 or utility. Nor does this, as might be inferred, 

 result from any peculiar difficulty attending their 

 study. There indeed seems to be a notion prevalent, 

 not only amongst the students of pha^nogamic, but 

 also amongst those of cryptogamic plants, that there 

 are, somehow or other, almost insuperable difficulties 

 connected with the pursuit of Lichenology. Now, 

 it is quite true that the correct study of these plants 

 is by no means an easy one, and that an accurate 

 knowledge of them is not to be obtained in a day 

 or an hoar ; but the same may, with equal truth, 

 be said of any other branch of Phytology, which 

 requires minute research and microscopical ex- 

 aQiination. Here, as elsewhere, there is no royal 

 road to learning, and the difficulties which lie in 



