THE FLOWBRLESS PLANTS. 211 



spread their green gloss and many-colored fringes over 

 the surface of the soil. 



Mosses enter into all our ideas of picturesque ruins ; 

 for they alone are evidence that the ruins are the work 

 of time. An artificial ruin can have no such accom- 

 paniment, until time has hallowed it by veiling its sur- 

 face with these memorials. They join with the ivy in 

 adorning the relics of ancient grandeur, and spread 

 over the perishable works of art the symbols of a 

 beauty that endureth for ever. While they are allied 

 to ruins, and remind us of age and decay, they are 

 themselves glowing in the freshness of youth, and 

 cover the places they occupy 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 for sustenance and protec- 

 tion. Though they bear no flowers upon their stems, 

 they delight in cherishing in their soft velvet knolls the 

 wood-anemone, the starwort, (Houstonia cseriilea,) 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 moist- 

 ure that is accumulated around them. Nature has pro- 

 vided them as a protection to many delicate plants, 

 which, embowered in their capillary foliage, are enabled 

 to sustain the heat of summer and the cold of winter, 

 and remain secure from the browsing herds. 



Winter, which is a time of sleep with the higher 

 vegetable tribes, is a season of activity with many of 

 the flowerless 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 grow- 

 ing in winter, they are fitted to act as a protection to 



