SOMETHING GATHERS UP THE FRAGMENTS. 239 



Possibly some reader will raise the question, Of 

 what service can all these decaying trees and their cov- 

 erings of mosses, lichens and fungi be to man ? They 

 have their uses, as we shall find if we examine the sub- 

 . ject more closely, and notice the effects produced. 



The floating germs of vegetable life, the seeds or 

 spores of the lichens and mosses, falling on the surface 

 of the fallen timber, find a soil suited to the peculiar 

 requirements and development of their organisms. 

 These minute vegetable growths are similar to those 

 seen growing upon old rails and stumps and dry walls, 

 -and which anyone ignorant of their nature might think 

 part of the substance to which they adhere, instead 

 of living plants as the cryptograms all are. Simple 

 plants, representing the earlier forms of vegetation in 

 the world's history, worthy are they of reverence and 

 adoration. These and others like them might be called 

 the grey fathers of the vegetable kingdom. 



As the lichens' decay they give place to the mosses, 

 and these, as they increase, send down their wedge- 

 like roots between the fissures of the bark, penetrating 

 into the tissue of the wood, already softened by the 

 ■decomposition of the former occupants. The dew, the 

 showers, the frosts and snows of winter, falling upon 

 the sponge -like mosses, fill them with moisture, in- 

 vigorate them and increase them till they form thick 

 mats that hide the surface of the wood. 



Some of these mosses, as we have seen, are not mere 



