ENGLISH WOODS : A CONTRAST 37 



lichen -covered rocks and ledges. The lichen is one 

 of the lowest and humblest forms of vegetable 

 growth, but think how much it adds to the beauty 

 of all our wild scenery, giving to our mountain 

 walls and drift bowlders the softest and most pleas- 

 ing tints. The rocky escarpments of New York 

 and Xew England hills are frescoed by Time him- 

 self, painted as with the brush of the eternal ele- 

 ments. But the lichen is much less conspicuous in 

 England, and plays no such part in her natural 

 scenery. The climate is too damp. The rocks in 

 Wales and Northumberland and in Scotland are 

 dark and cold and unattractive. The trees in the 

 woods do not wear the mottled suit of soft gray 

 ours do. The bark of the British beech is smooth 

 and close-fitting, and often tinged with a green 

 mould. The Scotch pine is clad as in a ragged suit 

 of leather. Nature uses mosses instead of lichens. 

 The old walls and housetops are covered with moss 

 — a higher form of vegetation than lichens. Its 

 decay soon accumulates a little soil or vegetable 

 mould, which presently supports flowering plants. 



Neither are there any rocks in England worth 

 mentioning; no granite bowlders, no fern-decked or 

 moss -covered fragments scattered through the woods, 

 as with us. They have all been used up for build- 

 ing purposes, or for road-making, or else have quite 

 dissolved in the humid climate. I saw rocks in 

 Wales, quite a profusion of them in the pass of 

 Llanberis, but they were tame indeed in comparison 

 with such rock scenery as that say at Lake Mohunk, 



