210 LICHENS. 



leafy thing* covering the boles of elms and oaks for 

 several feet from the ground could be. The patches were 

 more than a foot broad ; sometimes adhering closely to 

 the bark, but oftener with several of the large lobes 

 turned back, shewing the veined and pitted under surface, 

 studded with hollows and grey down. In the youug 

 plants the colour was light green ; but in more advanced 

 age it was olive brown ; and the actually aged ones were 

 grey. In this family the Apothecise are very small, and 

 are situated on the under side of the frond. We made 

 an excuse to save the horses, and walked up the hills, taking 

 that opportunity of securing large sheets of the kingly 

 lichen, our new and admired acquaintance. This used 

 to be given as a remedy for consumption in former days, 

 either on account of its possessing, in some small degree, 

 the bitter stomachic principle, which has rendered the Ice- 

 land moss so deservedly esteemed, or upon the less 

 reasonable doctrine of initials, where the outward form 

 was held to be the sign of a hidden use, and the lung- 

 like shape of the lobes, with its pitted cavities, suggested 

 them as remedies for lung disease. In these days such 

 logic appears the very perfection of absurdity ; but in 

 the minds of many deep thinkers there is a strong per- 

 suasion that we are but on the surface of botanical know- 

 ledge, and that in the secrets of science yet unfathomed, 

 an analogy between form and application will one day be 

 found, which will at once lay open to every observant 

 mind the qualities of each plant upon which his thought- 

 ful gaze fixes. 



We did not find the pitted Sticta, but a specimen of it 

 was given to us by one who had the opportunity of ex- 



