2i8 On the Campus 



terror. Shakespeare saw the forms of unstudied plants, 

 everything visible to the naked eye, and really omitted 

 very little. He speaks of mosses the lichens were in- 

 cluded with them chiefly as indicative of age in the 

 object on which they rest : 



"Under an oak, whose boughs were mossed with age 

 And high top bald with dry antiquity." 



As You Like It, iv: iii, 105. 

 or again: 



". . . will these mossed trees 

 That have outlived the eagle page thy heels, 

 And skip where thou point 'st out?" 



Tvmon, iv: iii, 223. 



Then again he simply touches them, but in such a way 

 as to reveal his full appreciation of their beauty, as in 

 Cymbeline, iv, ii. For the decoration of Imogen's grave 

 the ruddock would bring flowers 



". . . bring thee all this; 



Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none, 

 To winter-ground thy corse." Cymbeline, iv: ii, 224. 



The " furred moss" to "winter-ground thy corse" is ex- 

 o^uisite. 



Ferns, though so much larger, so handsome, and in our 

 day so all-attractive, failed generally to impress our 

 fathers. 



Butler, writing in 1670, has this to say : 



' ' They spring like fern, that infant weed, 

 Equivocally without a seed, 

 And have no possible foundation 

 But merely in th' imagination." 



