l80 HUMBLE FAMILIES IN GRAY. 



Nature. In these walks through the Attic wood- 

 lands, this self-same Usnea, so curiously bearding 

 the trees, must have often invited his attention. 

 One can imagine him intently viewing it with his 

 "burning sphere," — "the shrub-like," glaucesent, 

 papillate thallus enclosing the medullary indurated 

 cord, and- still more perplexing "apotheke" with 

 large, pale, shield-shaped disk, margined with 

 fibres. Were not these his conclusions as he pro- 

 ceeded with the analysis .■" Had he not one day 

 spoken of it to Plato, his teacher, on their way to 

 the lyceum, or discoursed on its structure and 

 mode of growth to his pupils, while walking up 

 and down the porches or in the streets of Athens ? 

 To examine this lichen, is almost like greeting the 

 philosopher who found time, amidst his other 

 works, to write on the science of plants more than 

 two thousand years ago. I look on it as one of 

 the old things of the world — an antique lichen, 

 done in bronze. 



Had not the Athenian in his walks often 

 admired, as Thoreau did, that curious fungus-like 

 lichen named Beomyces rosaceus, found not rarely 

 growing in little plots on the naked soils, in shady 

 woods.? At the foot of a hill, under the -black 

 birches, where the earth within a year or two has 

 been dug out and thrown in a heap, is a bed of 

 the fruit of this species. It has taken complete 

 possession of the mound, which is coated with the 



