202 The Scottish Naturalist. 



With the exception of the grasses they are the most abundant of 

 all plants, possessing myriads of representatives in every part of 

 the globe from which unfavourable conditions exclude all other 

 vegetation. And thus they contribute far more than we are apt 

 from a superficial observation to imagine to the picturesque 

 appearance of scenery and to the formation of the richly woven 

 robe of vegetation which conceals the skeleton of the earth. They 

 are the first objects that clothe the naked rocks which rise above 

 the surface of the ocean, and they are the last traces of vegetation 

 that disappear under degrees of heat and cold fatal to all life. 

 Their structure is so singularly varied and plastic that they are 

 adapted to every possible situation. Although they occupy but a 

 very subsidiary and unimportant position among the vegetation 

 which surrounds us in our daily walks, and are concealed in 

 isolated patches in the woods and fields by the luxuriance of 

 higher and more conspicuous plants, yet they constitute the sole 

 vegetation of very extensive regions of the earth's surface. Every 

 part of the globe within a thousand feet of the line of perpetual 

 snow on the mountains is redeemed from utter desolation by these 

 plants alone. The sublimest parts of the earth are adorned with 

 garlands of the humblest plants. Mosses and lichens form the 

 tapestry, the highly-wrought carpeting, laid down in the vestibules 

 of Nature's palaces. The northern portion of Lapland, the con- 

 tinent of Greenland, the large islands of Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, 

 and Iceland, the extensive territories of the Hudson's Bay 

 Company, the enormous tracts of level land which border the 

 Polar Ocean from the North Cape to Behring's Straits, across the 

 north of Europe and Asia, and from Behring's Straits to "Green- 

 land, across the north of America a stretch of many thousands 

 of miles all these immense areas of the earth's surface, where not 

 a tree nor a shrub, nor a flower is seen, except the creeping Arctic 

 willow and birch, and the stunted moss-like saxifrage and scurvy 

 grass, are covered with fields of lichens and mosses far exceeding 

 anything that can be compared in that respect amongst Phanero- 

 gamous plants. Thus, to the rugged magnificence of Alpine 

 scenery, and the dreary isolation of the Arctic steppes, and the 

 boundless wastes of brown desert and misty moorland, these 

 humble plants form almost the sole embellishments. 

 - So much for the distribution of these plants On the land ; their 

 range in the waters is still more extensive. Lichens and mosses 



