THE PAGE OF NATURE. 39 



clay. Some are found only on and near the sea-shore ; 

 others are confined to the beds of streams and cliffs 

 moistened by the spray of cascades, where, however 

 impetuous the torrent may be, they cling tenaciously to 

 the rocks, and form carpets of greenest verdure for the 

 white glistening feet of the descending waters. Some are 

 restricted exclusively to trees, whose trunks and boughs 

 they clasp like emerald bracelets; others lead a lonely, 

 hermit-like existence, in the dim moist caves and crevices 

 of rocks, where they are discovered only by the glisten- 

 ing of a stray adventurous sunbeam on the drops of dew 

 trembling upon their shining golden-green leaves. One 

 species has actually been found covering the half-decayed 

 hat of a traveller who had perished in a storm on Mount 

 St. Bernard. There is a very peculiar genus called 

 Splachnum, whose members are only found on organic 

 remains, on the blanched and polished skulls and bones 

 of hares and sheep which had furnished a meal to the 

 fox or the eagle, or on droppings of game and cattle 

 which browse upon the higher hills. This is the only 

 vegetable we find to be contemporary with or posterior 

 to the creation of animals, with the exception of minute 

 microscopic entophytes which grow within the bodies of 

 men and the lower animals. It is worthy of remark 

 though it may seem a digression that there was an 

 obvious necessity for the universal precedence of plants 

 in creation, for the hard inorganic elements of the rocks 

 had first to be converted by the vital energies of plants 

 into organic substances, before animals could be sustained. 

 It is true that the first created plant and the first created 

 animal derived their origin alike from the inorganic soil, 



