THE MOUNTAIN FRINGE. 



It would not be strange if sometime we should learn to know 

 that the evolutionist had actually laid bare the fine, mysterious 

 chain, which, as the poet found out long ago, binds all beings in 

 a common kinship and a universal sympathy. There is no fact 

 of nature more obvious even to the casual observer than the 

 great variety of forms existing side by side in the vegetable 

 world. It would task the most vivid and active imagination to 

 conceive of a form of plant-life of which the naturalist does not 

 already know something which would more than parallel it in 

 novelty or strange eccentricity of habit. And there is a place for 

 everything, and a chance for all, — for the feathery fern in the 

 deep shade of the woods, and for the gray lichen upon the bare 

 rock, or the smooth bole of the beech, not less than for the lily 

 and the rose. Even the ugly and uninteresting fungus, great 

 and small, has its place and its opportunity, living though it 

 does, like a human sycophant and parasite, upon the bounty of 

 others. It is certainly a misnomer to call that sort of people 

 sponges, for sponges in nature are an honest folk, and live indus- 

 trious and useful lives. But the fungus eats what others have 

 earned, and subsists by making the world poorer. 



I think it something more than a mere fancy which discovers 

 analogies between the forms and habits of plant-life and the 

 qualities of human nature, or the experiences of human life. The 

 unity of the world might easily furnish grounds for an inner and 

 deeper correspondence. We can easily suppose that there is one 

 spirit in all and through all ; that there is one type of architect- 

 ure, so to say, for the visible and the invisible worlds. 



How many meanings might we gather from the whisperings 

 of the winds through the leaves of the trees ! How significant 



