YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT. 157 



the busy host of corals, after having built for a thousand 

 years the high ramparts of their marvellous rings, at last 

 rise to a level with the surface; they die, having done 

 their duty in the great household of nature, and bequeath 

 to man a low, flat, circular island which now first beholds 

 the sweet light of day, above the dark waves of the 

 ocean. Then come other hosts of busy servants of the 

 Almighty, to do their duty. A soft, silky network of 

 gay, bright colors, hides after a few days the nakedness 

 of the rock. It is a moss of the simplest kind we know : 

 consisting of single cells and wondrously short-lived. It 

 dies and disappears, leaving, apparently, no perceptible 

 trace behind it ; still, it has not lived and labored in 

 vain. A delicate, faint tinge, little more, is left behind, 

 and in that mere shadow of things gone by lies the germ 

 of a future, mighty growth. Years pass, and the shadow 

 grows darker ; the spots begin to run together, and then 

 follow countless hosts of lichens, a kind of humble mosses, 

 which the great and pious Linnaeus touchingly called the 

 bondslaves of Nature, because they are chained to the rock 

 on which they grow, and, after death are buried in the 

 soil which they make and improve for others only. Little 

 ugly, blackish-brown or pale white plants as they are, 

 but niggardly supported by the thin air of mountain tops, 

 they show us that there are rich garments and humble, 

 wealth and poverty among plants as well as among men. 

 The lowliest and humblest of plants, these lichens become, 

 however, the most useful servants of Nature, which here 

 as in the other works of the Almighty, affords innumer- 

 able proofs that, throughout creation, the grandest and 



