I4 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
duced to impalpable atoms ; waters and gases are 
decomposed and moulded into new forms and sub- 
stances having new properties, by vegetable growth. 
Minute as these plants are, they are intimately 
related to the giant forms of the universe. It has 
been observed that as the great whole is indissolu- 
bly connected with its minutest parts, so the ger- 
mination of the minutest lichen, and the growth 
of the simplest moss, is directly linked with the 
grandest astronomical phenomena ; nor could the 
smallest fungus or conferva be annihilated without 
destroying the equilibrium of the universe. It is 
with organic nature as with the body politic or the 
microcosm of the human frame, “if one member 
suffer all the members suffer with it,” and the loss 
of one class or order would involve that of another, 
till all would perish. Our comfort and health, nay 
our very existence, more or less immediately de- 
pend on the useful functions which these plants 
perform. Before we can have the wheat which 
forms our daily bread, or the grass which yields us, 
through the instrumentality of our herds, our daily 
supply of animal food, or the cotton and linen which 
form our clothes, countless generations of lichens 
and mosses must have been at work preparing a soil 
for the growth of the plants which produce these 
useful materials. And as on the dry land, so in 
the great waters, this wonderful chain of connexion 
