18 LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. 



substance. See, already moist-footed mosses have scaled 

 up his sides, and, true parasites as they are, cling firmly 

 to his dying body. Whole families of minute algae have 

 snugly ensconced themselves in every wrinkle of his 

 weather-beaten face, and diminutive water-pools fill every 

 scar and every dimple. Soon they will have hid him for- 

 ever under the green turf of his grave, and slowly, slowly, 

 he will moulder away under his moist grave-clothes. 



And if he does at last succumb, the mighty rock is 

 it not a glorious strife, this never-ceasing battle between 

 soft, elastic water, and cold, rigid stone ? How they charge 

 and charge again, these subtle, tiny drops of rain ; these 

 airy, gentle flakes of snow; these graceful crystals of icy 

 hail! The great giant cannot resist the diminutive dwarfs. 

 Truly, the battle is not to the strong, for the victor is the 

 weak, wee drop of water, and so helpless is the colossal 

 mountain, that it succumbs to the passing shower and the 

 soft, elastic wave. For, in fact, its very massiveness is 

 its sure ruin. His foes are light, airy beings he cannot 

 seize them, he cannot strangle them in his gigantic arms. 

 The tiny brook wears its little rill with untiring industry 

 into the rocky sides of the mountain; the torrent tears 

 its flanks, spring after spring, with ever new and ever 

 growing fierceness; huge glaciers break its mighty ribs; 

 the air crumbles the lofty summit to pieces, and the 

 proud giant sees his sad fate foreshadowed in the ruins 

 that slowly, but surely, gather at his feet. There he 

 stands, stern and stately still, the hero of Nature's great 

 tragedy; boldly facing certain death, and yet manfully, 

 nobly struggling against inevitable Fate. For there is 



