58 THE ADVENTURES OF A NATURE GUIDE 



Plants, too, though anchored, have a variety of 

 winter customs. Trees may be said to hibernate, 

 even the firs and spruces that go to sleep in full 

 dress. Beneath the snow are countless seeds that 

 will live their life next year, and numbers of plants 

 that have hauled down their towers and colours 

 for the winter. You may seek them and walk 

 over them, and Mother Nature will only say: 

 "Trouble me not, for the door is now shut and my 

 children are with me in bed." 



Moss in midwinter is as fresh and charming as 

 though knee-deep in June. It is dainty and strik- 

 ing in a white setting. Mosses and lichens are 

 ever a part of the poetry associated with ferns and 

 the golden sands of bubbling springs; they are 

 sharers in the cheerful, ever-silent beauty of the 

 wild. They never intrude, but are among the most 

 subdued and harmonious decorations in all nature. 

 Yet lichens carry all the colours of the rainbow. 

 In dark woods, deep canons, and on the pinnacles 

 of high peaks they cling in leafy, maplike decora- 

 tions of oxidized silver, hammered brass, pure cop- 

 per, and stains of yellow, brown, scarlet, gray, and 

 green. They are almost classical decorations and 

 touch with soft colour and beauty the roughest 

 bark and boulders. Until one knows that they 

 are living things they seem only chemical colour- 

 ings on the crags, and a part of the colour scheme 

 in the bark of trees. 



One day during this outing I had been walking 



