LICHENS. 189 
seed in a sample of the pulverized rock, and deter- 
mining whether the growing plant yields morephos- 
phoric acid than was present in the grain ; it being 
evident that any excess must have been derived 
from the rock from which it drew its nourishment. 
As lichens are thus the earth’s first mercy, so 
they are its last gift to us. They ‘cover with 
strange and tender honour the scarred disgrace 
of ruin, laying their quiet finger on the trembling 
stones to teach them rest.’ Nearer than the remains 
of castle or hovel; nearer than the garden trees 
which they invest with a hoary reverence when all 
service of fruit-bearing is over, the lichens come to 
us. They take up their watch upon the tomb’ 
that is forsaken by all else. More constant and 
faithful even than the moss that fills up the hollow 
inscription with its soft green velvet lines, the 
very handwriting of Nature striving to keep in 
remembrance what man has forgotten, the lichen 
endures when the moss decays and fades away ; 
and, in its living letters clinging to the worn stone, 
conveys the significant lesson of immortality, of 
life in the midst of death. Nowhere have I been 
more struck with the last tender ministries of the 
lichens than in a romantic churchyard beside a 
ruined ivy-grown chapel in a little island in Loch 
Leven, off Ballachulish. In that churchyard the 
Macdonalds of Glencoe, who perished in the ter- 
