THE EARLIEST FLOWERS. 127 
their lives in preparing places for the higher forms which 
come after them. The study of them will enable us to 
appreciate Ruskin’s eloquent praise of them: 
‘Meek creatures! the first mercy of the earth, 
veiling with hushed softness its dentless rocks, creatures 
full of pity, covering with strange and tender honor the 
sacred disguise of ruin, laying quiet fingers on the 
trembling stones to teach them rest. No words that I 
know of will say what these mosses and lichens are; 
none are delicate enough; none perfect enough; none 
rich enough. They will not be gathered like the flowers 
for chaplet or love-token, but of these: the wild-bird 
will make its nest and the wearied child its pillow, 
and as the earth’s first mercy, so they are its last gift 
to us. When all other service is vain from plant and 
tree, the soft mosses and grey lichens take up their 
watch by the headstone. The woods, the blossoms, the 
gift-bearing grasses, have done their parts for a time, 
but these do service forever. Trees for the builder’s 
yard, flowers for the bride’s chamber, corn for the 
granary, mosses and lichens for the grave.” 
While we have been turning aside, the warm April 
sun has been allowing other blossoms to unfold. It 
makes real the myth of the ‘“ Fountain'of Youth” ; but 
Nature does not disclose all her secrets even to wishful 
eyes, and all the charms of this upspringing of life in its 
