MARCH. 129 



for weapons of the chase ; or of those, who had planted or- 

 chards, and builded many a rood of stone wall now crumb- 

 ling and falling to decay. 



Taking our path amidst the mixed growth of pine and 

 oak. and of trees usually social in a thin soil, the white spire 

 of some meeting-house or belfry of some factory-building for- 

 bade the thought of wild nature, even had not the mingled 

 character of the productions of the soil in the introduced as 

 well as native species told the same tale. For, not only 

 " man's busy generations" pass away, and one crowds out 

 another, but the same mysterious order is seen in the plan of 

 nature in her other kingdoms. It is not many years after a 

 new area is opened to civilization, ere the local and native 

 flora becomes so mingled and changed as to puzzle the inves- 

 tigator. Many of our most beautiful and delicate natives in 

 the vegetable world, fade instantly away before the axe, with 

 the fall of the sheltering and massive forms which were their 

 contemporaries through centuries, (it may be) of a primitive 

 age : and as if they were parasites of the soil in its virgin 

 condition we find them refusing to grow upon it when it has 

 become violated by the art and design of man. And then 

 come hosts of weeds springing up under his feet ; plants out 

 of place, as all weeds are ; and only so, made into weeds, 

 marching proudly beside him, on the track of the plough, be- 

 side his log-built hut in the woods and forests, near the shade 

 of his lordly mansion or revelling amid his choicely cultured 

 flowers, the sturdy beggars of foreign climes as they are ! 



It was no day, that, for the display of the rejuvenescent 

 mosses, and cheery, brightening lichens, which anon old and 

 grey in aspect, on stone or paling or tree-trunk, may suddenly 

 vivify and freshen under the eye, should a passing shower 

 meet their spongy fronds and be imbibed in a moment of 

 time ! I admire these freaks of Dame Nature, and I have 

 often watched them too, when as if by the moving of a 

 magic wand, where a moment ago there was a seeming ster- 

 rility, now there is verdure and beauty suddenly sprung into 

 life ! Yet we were in quest of a plant belonging to the class 

 which embraces them — it nevertheless many steps higher, 



VOL. XXI. NO. Ill, 17 



