WOOD ROADS 



may see cunning workmen making soil 

 for the nourishment of these forest trees. 

 Here will be a round blot of yellow-gray 

 lichen, perhaps a Parmelia conspersa, 

 clinging to the smoothest surface of flint 

 with ease and sending down its micro- 

 scopic rhizoids into the tiniest crevice 

 between the round pebble, which is the 

 plum, and the slate which makes the body 

 of the pudding. 



On another part of the boulder you 

 may find a slanting surface, where the 

 parmelia's work is already done. Its tiny 

 root-organs have dissolved off and split 

 away enough of the slate to loosen some 

 tiny pebbles, which fall to the ground as 

 gravel, leaving hollows in which dew and 

 dead lichens make a soil for the roots 

 of soft pads of mosses. Some of the 

 boulders over here are like Western 

 buttes, densely tenanted by these hardy 

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