172 SEASIDE DIVINITY. 



the various plants comprehended in what is called 

 the vegetable kingdom ; and such are the beauti- 

 ful and beneficial adaptations of the parts of 

 plants to each other, or of the whole plant to the 

 place it is to occupy, that there is scarcely any 

 portion of the earth's surface, however apparently 

 unfavourable, where some form of vegetable life 

 may not be found. 



Thus it is not only in the soil which has been 

 rendered rich and fertile by the decay of succes- 

 sive generations of vegetable substances that 

 plants chiefly flourish. In such soil, indeed, the 

 higher orders of plants are to be found, because 

 all the conditions are favourable to their luxuriant 

 development. 



But vegetation proceeds in situations the most 

 unpropitious. The coral island in the midst of 

 the ocean, on which there does not exist a particle 

 of soil, and which has been but recently raised 

 above the level of the sea, soon becomes covered 

 with verdure. The surface of the hard rock, on 

 which no soil could find a resting-place, becomes 

 covered with many-coloured lichens, which season 

 after season flourish and cast their germs ; the 

 castle wall, between the crevices of which nothing 

 but the hardest lime is to be discovered, affords a 

 resting-place to the moss or the fern. 



Even the extremes of heat, cold, and drought, 

 are not incompatible with vegetation. A hot 

 spring in the Manilla Islands, the water of which 

 raises the thermometer to 187, is not too hot for 

 plants to flourish in it. In the boiling springs of 



