LICHENS. 171 
the beautiful golden candles which they burn on 
festival days. A wonderful race are these same 
Smolanders. They are so remarkably industrious 
and inventive, that they have given rise to a popu- 
lar proverb in Sweden, ‘Put a Smolander upon a 
roof, and he will get a livelihood.’ ‘This charac- 
ter,’ says Frederika Bremer, in her charming work, 
The Midnight Sun, ‘is strangely imprinted on the 
remote forest-regions of the country. The forest, 
which is the countryman’s workshop, is his store- 
house too. With the various lichens that grow 
upon the trees and rocks, he cures the diseases 
with which he is sometimes afflicted, dyes the 
articles of clothing which he wears, and poisons 
the noxious and dangerous animals which annoy 
him. The juniper and cranberry give him their 
berries, which he brews into drink ; he makes a 
conserve of them, and mixes their juices with his 
dry salt-meat, and is healthful and cheerful with 
these and with his labour, of which he makes a 
pleasure.’ 
If we wish to obtain a true idea of the value 
and importance of lichens in human economy, we 
must consider them in perhaps the most singular 
of their aspects, viz.,as dye-stuffs and sources of 
colouring matter. Many of the tree-lichens, in a 
moist state, are very showy, yielding in water a 
coloured infusion corresponding to the hue of their 
