348 SPRING FLOWERS. 



country, could not only bear the frost, but ac- 

 tually to be frozen without much injury. The 

 progress of ordinary freezings and thawings is, 

 however, rather rapid for the safety even of native 

 plants, unless the roots are deep in the soil 

 deeper than the soil is usually found to be in cold 

 upland places. Gardeners find great protection 

 to fleshy roots in the ground, from covering them 

 over with straw and litter before the frost ; and 

 the moss and lichen act, in those places where 

 they come, as if they were a coat of natural 

 litter. 



Owing to those protections, the spring flowers, 

 though not very abundant, come much sooner in 

 those mossy places than one would expect, though 

 they neither come so soon, nor are so fine in their 

 qualities as those in places which are covered with 

 snow early in the winter, and remain in that state 

 till the spring. If the snow lies long on a spot 

 where the roots are, the snow-drops will abso- 

 lutely push their little starry cups through it. 



But these humble crops are as serviceable in 

 the warm season as they are in the cold. Many 

 of them absorb moisture at their whole surface, 

 and all of them retain it in their thickly matted 

 forms, so that they keep places in a moist and 

 fertile state, which, but for them, would be en- 

 tirely parched. When the heath has been burnt 

 on a mountain surface, or that surface in any 

 other way laid bare, it is truly astonishing how 

 speedily it becomes clothed with green mosses. 

 These keep the surface cool, whereas the rays of 

 the sun beating upon it, would heat it like an 

 oven, and it would be converted into blowing 

 dust ; and when summer rains did fall, they would 



