CHAPTER II. 
LICHENS. 
3O most minds the title of this chapter may 
ne suggest no idea of importance. Flowers 
| they love, for they are linked with child- 
hood’s recollections of sunshine and mirth, and 
mingle with the hallowed memories of the dead, and 
of the scenes amid which they are laid. Ferns they 
admire as they cluster in the forest shade, gracefully 
bend down to see their own forms in the mossy 
spring, or wave from some rugged crag their delicate 
fronds in the breeze of summer. Mosses they 
allow to be lovely, as they repose their languid 
limbs in the sultry noonday, on the woodland 
banks wreathed in dreamy-looking shadows, to 
which these tiny plants lend their all of softness 
and beauty. But the lowly lichens they pass by 
with indifference, regarding them only as inorganic 
discolorations and weather-stains on the trees and 
