THE PAGE OF NATURE. 85 



often amid such dreary scenes does a little wild-flower, 

 or even lowlier fern or lichen, arrest the weary eye by its 

 simple and mute appeal, and awaken thoughts and sym- 

 pathies which are never felt, or at least allowed their 

 full sway, amid the busy haunts of men. Like the little 

 moss which revived the spirits of the lonely and despairing 

 Park in the African desert, it carries us back to the 

 populous world we had well nigh forgotten, reminds us 

 of the enjoyments and affections of home, and more 

 than all, raises our thoughts to the Maker of the great 

 and the small, who placed it there to cheer by its 

 presence the lonely wilderness, and whose wondrous 

 skill and goodness its every petal, leaf, or frond declares 

 in language, silent and unuttered, yet more eloquent than 

 a thousand words. 



The great object which nature intended to subserve 

 by the universal diffusion of the lichens, is obviously 

 that of preparing, by the disintegration of hard and 

 barren rocks, an organic soil in which higher orders of 

 vegetation may exist. Humble and apparently insig- 

 nificant as they are, it is to them we owe the bright 

 array of vegetable forms, which contribute so largely to 

 the beauty and magnificence of the world we inhabit ; 

 they form the first link in the chain of nature by which 

 the whole earth is covered with a robe of vegetation. 

 Their powdery crusts and little coloured cups, drawing 

 their nourishment in most part from the surrounding 

 atmosphere, extend themselves over the naked and de- 

 solate rock, and form, by the particles of sand into which 

 they crumble its surface, and their own decaying tissues, 

 a thin layer of mould fit for the reception of the simplest 



