VEGETABLE MOULD — ^LICHENS. 87 



lives, dies, and renews itself; and it seems as if He Las 

 arranged everything so completely, as to require Him to take 

 no further heed of it. The life and death of vegetables, like 

 the life and death of men, are but transitions. Death is the 

 nourisher of life. A thing does not perish that it may no | 

 longer exist, but that another may exist in its turn ; and when I 

 a certain circle is completed, the last production of this circle 

 dies in its turn to resuscitate the first. Look at a naked 

 rock, it is at first covered with rounded yellow patches ; these 

 patches are already springing into vegetation. 



Mould of all kinds, for which we entertain a great repug- 

 nance, presents to the eye armed with a microscope charming 

 vegetations, little forests which abound in their peculiar 

 animals. 



Mushrooms, which are a species of mould, cover arid spots 

 with their whimsical forms and various colours, which in 

 some kinds are even brilliant. The orange is of a capuein 

 colour; the false orange is of the same colour, spotted with 

 white; the red agaric is carnation, the viscous agaric is 

 orange ; others present all the shades of purple and brown, or 

 are marbled with various colours. 



These first vegetables die, and with their renjains leave 

 upon the rock or upon the barren grit a small quantity of 

 a sort of mould, very small, but just large enough to allow 

 certain lichens, which scarcely require any aid, yet cannot do 

 quite without, to shoot up and vegetate in their turn. The 

 mould which you see upon tread, preserves, &c. bears at the 

 extremity of the filaments, little heads which burst for the 

 escape of a productive dust, by means of which they are re- 

 produced. Upon a pot of preserves may be found a great 

 number of species of these small vegetations, difiering fi:om 

 each other in form and fructification. 



There is a particular kind of mould which attacks the seed 

 of wheat, which is simply a parasitical plant. 



The lichens die in their turn, and augment with their 

 remains the layer of vegetable earth, in order that, succes- 

 sively, other species of stronger lichens may extend and in- 

 crease that layer of earth on dying. In this manner, plants, 

 to which a multitude of names have been given, succeed each 

 other, until that layer of earth acquires sufiicient thickness 



