LICHENS. O 



and bright flowers, again to be succeeded by shrubs and 

 trees, till at length, after the lapse perchance of ages, ex- 

 tensive woodlands mantle in their luxuriance those bold 

 and precipitous rocks on which our small tribe first took root. 

 Take notice of our exceeding beauty, for although but 

 small, and seeming to form part of the stony mass to which 

 we cling, few among the vegetable tribes may equal us in 

 delicacy of form or tint. Look carefully, and you may 

 count at least nine species on the rough stone beside you, 

 among which is the violet-scented lichen, conspicuous for 

 its brilliant hue. Linnaeus speaks of this our brother, in 

 his tour through Oeland and East Gothland, as tinting the 

 stones, on either side his pathway, with a red pigment, 

 which, on being rubbed, became bright yellow, and yielded 

 a scent of violets ; whence the natives call them violet- 

 stones, though the stone itself is scentless. The same bright 

 lichen appears like blood-red stains on the stones of Holy- 

 well in Flintshire. Men in old times fancied such stains 

 were left when St. Winifred was martyred amid its rushing 



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