BEAUTY OF OLD GRAVESTONES 213 



some one dear to them a mother or wife or daughter 

 they simply went to the stonemason and ordered a 

 gravestone, leaving him to fashion it in his own way. 

 The reason of the reason the full explanation of the 

 singular fact that they, in these house- beautiful and 

 generally art-worshipping times, had given no thought 

 to the matter until it was unexpectedly sprung upon 

 them ; and that if they had lived, say, a hundred years 

 ago, they would have given it some thought this the 

 reader will easily find out for himself. 



It is comforting to reflect that gravestones do not 

 last for ever, nor for very long ; and in the meantime 

 Nature is doing what she can with our ugly modern 

 memorials, touching, softening, and tingeing them with 

 her mosses, lichens, and with algae her beautiful 

 iolithus. In most churchyards in southern England 

 we see many stones stained a peculiar colour, a bright 

 rust red, darkest in dry weather, and brightest in wet 

 summers, often varying to pink and purple and orange ; 

 but whatever the hue or shade the effect on the grey 

 stone, lichened or not, is always beautiful. It is not 

 a lichen; when the staining is looked closely at no- 

 thing is seen but a roughness, a powdery appearance, 

 on the stone's surface. It is an aerial alga of the 

 genus Crooleptus, confined to the southern half of 

 England, and most common in Hampshire, where its 

 beautifying blush may sometimes be seen on old stone 

 walls of churches, and old houses and ruins; but it 



