20 VOICES FROM THE WOODLANDS. 



*' The wildest glen on earth can show 

 S.ome touch of nature's genial glow : 

 On high Benmore green mosses grow, 

 And heath-bells bud in deep Glencoe, 

 And copse on Cruchar Ben." 



Gather the humblest from among our company, and 

 describe, if you can, its varying lights and shades, its 

 different hues, now bright, now dark, as the sunbeams 

 come and go, or clouds pass athwart the heavens. Observe, 

 too, its wondrous construction, the adaptation of its roots 

 to rock or fen, the varied beauty of its leaves, and the 

 exquisite finish of all its parts, and learn from them that 

 deep wisdom is manifested in the smallest plant that imbibes 

 the dew of heaven. 



And what more beautiful than a brotherhood of mosses 

 growing among the tangled roots of aged trees, scathed 

 by time, and twisting in their strange fantasies adown steep 

 banks on either side of some green lane, that winds away 

 away into the woodlands ? You may see one and then 

 another nestling between the huge blocks of stone, or among 



