10 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
trees here and there in different countries, realiz- 
ing Cowper's wish for ‘a boundless contiguity of 
shade ;’ there are vast colonies of flowering plants ; 
but the range of the most ubiquitous tree or flower 
is vastly inferior to that of some of the humblest 
lichens and mosses. Although these plants occupy 
but a very subsidiary and unimportant position 
among the vegetation which surrounds us in our 
daily walks, and are concealed in isolated patches 
in the woods and fields by the luxuriance of higher 
and more conspicuous plants, yet they constitute 
the sole vegetation of very extensive regions of the 
earth’s surface. Every part of the globe, within 
a thousand feet of the line of perpetual snow, is 
redeemed from utter desolation by these plants 
alone. Above the valleys and the lower slopes 
which form the step of transition from plain to 
mountain—inhabited by prosperous and civilized 
nations—is the domain of mist and mystery, the 
region of storm—a world which is not of this world, 
where God and nature are all in all, and man is 
nothing ; and in this unknown region there are im- 
mense tracts familiar to the eye of wild bird, to the 
summer cloud, the stars and meteors of the night 
—strange to human faces and the sound of human 
voices, where the lichen and the moss alone luxu- 
riate and carpet the sterile ground. The grandest 
and sublimest regions of the earth are adorned 
