FLOWEELESS PLANTS. 59 



sea-weeds ; such, again, are mosses, and many other 

 little plants, the pigmies of their world, passed over 

 by incurious eyes, and uncared for by any save the 

 botanist, but capable of supplying inexhaustible de- 

 light, and this at every season of the year. When 

 the survey of large and showy plants has been in a 

 measure completed, a man may go to these little 

 flowerless plants, as into a totally new realm, begin 

 life over again, — find that the tender ministrations of 

 the common things of nature, even in these their most 

 attenuated forms, are, after the love of wisdom and 

 goodness, the true elixir vitoB; and discover that 

 through their aid the surprises and wonder of the 

 child may be renewed to him over and over again^ and 

 the more delightfully because the experience of possi- 

 bly half a lifetime has supplied knowledge that renders 

 the new facts no longer mysteries, but insights. What 

 more exquisite, in early spring, than the spectacle of 

 the young uncurling ferns, rising out of the- earth in 

 little coils of spongy verdure, densely clothed with 

 brown scales, day by day taller, day by day unrolling 

 more and more, till by and by they present the figure 

 of a bishop's crozier, or the crook of a shepherd ? 



By the time that the sweet dog-rose flings out its 

 scented cups, these coils have turned into broad, flat 

 leaves, often with innumerable feather-like segments, 

 but for flowers we look in vain : autumn, even another 

 season, does not reward our expectation. Instead of 



