172 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



unsuspected world, which all our lives hitherto, we 

 have heedlessly passed by. Here beneath our 

 square inch of magnification, veins and veinlets run 

 in rare lines of beauty and fork like highways of 

 travel pressed often by microscopic animalcule feet 

 on business of as great import to their owners as to 

 us is the buying of a government bond or the plac- 

 ing of a mortgage. Sometimes these fairy lanes 

 traverse smooth, green plains with just enough in- 

 equality to add zest to the exercise; at other times 

 the going is rough with chaffy scales that strew the 

 way like jagged brown rocks. Often there are for- 

 ests of hairs that rise under the glass like tree- 

 trunks, and chaparral of low-lying woolliness. In 

 such varied territory the communities of tiny spores 

 are set. At times we find them flat on the leaf sur- 

 face in little naked heaps ; again pocketed at points 

 along the edge, where the reflexed margin covers 

 them over as with a flap. Often they are in lines 

 straight or curved, single or double, snugly tucked 

 away under a membranous blanket; again they are 

 gathered beneath the protection of round umbrella- 

 like covers upon which, from our skyey height, we 

 look down as upon the roof of some precisely con- 

 ventional town where every house is like the others 

 and all are placed at equal distances on each side 

 of one long avenue. As the arrangement of the 



