20 PROSERPINA. 



It is true that there are black lichens enough, and brown 

 ones : nevertheless, the chief use of lichens is for silver and 

 gold colour on rocks ; and it is the dead moss which gives the 

 leopard-like touches of black. Arid yet here again as to a 

 thing I have been looking at and painting all my life I am 

 brought to pause, the moment I think of it carefully. The 

 black moss which gives the precious Velasquez touches, lies, 

 much of it, flat on the rocks ; radiating from its centres 

 powdering in the fingers, if one breaks it off, like dry tea. Is 

 it a black species ? or a black-parched state of other species, 

 perishing for the sake of Velasquez effects, instead of accumu- 

 lation of earth ? and, if so, does it die of drought, accident- 

 ally, or, in a sere old age, naturally ? and how is it related to 

 the' rich green bosses that grow in deep velvet ? And there 

 again is another matter not clear to me. One calls them 

 * velvet ' because they are all brought to an even surface at 

 the top. Our own velvet is reduced to such trimness by cut- 

 ting. But how is the moss trimmed? By what scissors? 

 Carefullest Elizabethan gardener never shaped his yew hedge 

 more daintily than the moss fairies smooth these soft rounded 

 surfaces of green and gold. And just fancy the difference, 

 if they were ragged ! If the fibres had every one of them 

 leave to grow at their own sweet will, and to be long or short 

 as they liked, or, worse still, urged by fairy prizes into labo- 

 riously and agonizingly trying which could grow longest. 

 Fancy the surface of a spot of competitive moss ! 



16. But how is it that they are subdued into that spherical 

 obedience, like a crystal of wavellite ? * Strange that the 

 vegetable creatures growing so fondly on rocks should form 

 themselves in that mineral-like manner. It is true that the 

 tops of all well-grown trees are rounded, on a large scale, as 

 equally ; but that is because they grow from a central stem, 

 while these mossy mounds are made out of independent fila- 

 ments, each growing to exactly his proper height in the sphere 

 short ones outside, long in the middle. Stop, though ; i 

 that so ? I am not even sure of that ; perhaps they are built 



*TJ.\e reader should buy a small specimen of this mineral ; it is a 

 useTul type of many structures. 



