THE FLOWERLESS PLANTS. 177 



ing the relics of ancient grandeur, and spread over the 

 perishable works of art the symbols of a beauty that en- 

 dureth forever. While they are allied to ruins, and re- 

 mind us of age and decay, they are themselves glowing 

 in the freshness of youth, and cover the places they oc- 

 cupy with a perpetual verdure. They cluster around the 

 decayed objects of nature and art, and are themselves the 

 nurseries of many a little flower that depends on them fur 

 sustenance and protection. Though they bear no flowers 

 upon their stems, they delight in cherishing in their 

 soft velvet knolls the wood-anemone, the houstonia, the 

 cypripedium, and the white orchis, — the nun of the 

 meadows, — whose roots are imbedded among the fibres 

 of the peat-mosses, and derive support from the moisture 

 that is accumulated around them. Nature has provided 

 them as a shield to many delicate plants, which, em- 

 bowered in their capillary foliage, are enabled to sustain 

 the heat of summer and the cold of winter, and re- 

 main secure from the browsing herds. 



"Winter, which is a time of sleep with the higher vegeta- 

 ble tribes, is a season of activity with many of the flower- 

 less plants. There are certain species of mosses and lichens 

 that vegetate under the snow, and but few of the mosses 

 are at all injuriously affected by the action of frost. By 

 this power of living and growing in winter, they are fitted 

 to act as protectors to other plants from the vicissitudes 

 of winter weather, and by their close texture they prevent 

 the washing away of the soil from the declivities into the 

 valleys. They answer the double purpose of catching the 

 floating particles of dust and retaining them about their 

 roots, and of preventing any waste from the places they 

 occupy. Finding in them the same protection which is 

 afforded by the snow, or by the matting of straw provided 

 by the gardener, there are many plants that vegetate un- 

 der their surface, secure from the alternate action of freez- 



8* L 



