92 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
grey rosettes, eccentric patches, and nebule of 
the lichens ; and the rude rugged rock acquires an 
additional wildness and picturesqueness through 
the affluent display of these plants. Along with 
the wallflower and the ivy, they decorate the 
mouldering ruin, and harmonize its otherwise 
haggard and discordant features, by their subdued 
and varied colouring, with the gentler forms and 
the softer tone of the scenery around. Thus 
nature takes back into her bosom the falling works 
of human skill and power, and luxuriantly adorns 
them with her living garniture of beauty; and 
these softening stains with which she touches the 
rude, stern masses she disjoins, have their value 
in the composition not simply on account of the 
pleasure they afford to the eye by the mere tints 
of a painter’s palette, but also and chiefly on 
account of the meaning they suggest through the 
eye to the mind as the genuine and expressive 
colouring of time. To the trees of the forest 
lichens impart a singularly aged and venerable ap- 
pearance which irresistibly commands our homage, 
and leads our thoughts far back over the dim path of 
years to the memories of primitive times. So abun- 
dant are they in the Highland woods, that every tree 
is covered with their long white streaming tufts, 
which look, on the green tassel-laden branches, 
and among the fringy, waving hollows of the 
