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As a contrast to this general verdure of mosses, boggy places may be noticed where 
they are marked to the eye by the investiture of the gray, melancholy-looking 
Sphagnum, dangerous to tread upon. 
We are all so familiar with the aspect of ferns—green, as fringing rocky 
lanes with their elegant fronds, or in autumn showing an extent of rich sienna- 
brown, where the Eagle Brake (Pteris aquilina) revels to a wide extent in parks, 
heaths, and forest ground as a covert to game—that I need not dwell on the beauty 
of ferns, though I can scarcely avoid a note of admiration to rocks where they 
dangle, or the effect of masses of the parsley-leaved fern ( Allosorus crispa), on the 
Welsh mountains. 
I rather wish to refer to the humbler cryptogamic tribes, that by their 
congregated numbers and confluence tint rocks and hils, and emblazon their 
rigidity. 
Among these Lichens take an important place, for maritime rocks are often 
resplendent with orange, yellow, or burnt-sienna tints from the various Lichens 
that luxuriate in the damp sea air; and I remember a range of cliffs on the 
Pembrokeshire coast made brilliantly golden by the spread of the brass-wire 
Lichen (Borrera flavicans) upon their rugged surface. Even among common rural 
objects how often long out-house roofs or stabling have the yellow Lichens that 
encrust the tiles lit up in colorific pomp by the descending sun, and an old broken- 
down half-rotten barn door is diversified by the coloured impressions of the damp 
fingers of time. 
The rocks of Switzerland in many places are reddened to a’ great extent by 
a cryptogam called by Linneus Lichen Jolithus, though now considered to be 
an Algal, and I observed some great rocks thus coloured on Monte Rosa, which 
probably derives its name from that circumstance. The buttresses of country 
churches and old tombstones are often reddened by this substance. 
Other precipices and damp stony walls are sobered into dingy brown by the 
spread of Parmelias, or blackened by the Collemate tribe— 
The living stains that Nature’s hand alone 
Profuse of life pours forth upon the stone ; 
and the beauty of the Map Lichen (Lecides geographica) that spreads its yellow 
thallus cracked with black lines like the courses of rivers on a map, over granite 
and trap rocks in mountainous countries, has been generally acknowledged, 
Many rocks and stone towers are made gray by the Crab’s-eye Lichen 
(Lecanora parella), or the Cudbear (C. Tartarea), and many rocks thus whitened 
receive a distinctive name in Wales; and it is remarked that such rocks become 
peculiarly visible in dull weather, and the Welsh peasantry, taking the hint in 
their tempest-beaten localities, whitewash their houses all over, roofs and every 
part. Old trunks of trees are often coloured by Lichens and Junyermannic, and 
T 
