INTRODUCTION. 



Section I. 

 THE HOMES OF MOSSES. 



" Rocks overlaid with velvet and fur, to stand on in the first place. If you look close into the 

 velvet, you will find it is jewelled and set with stars in a stately way." — Ruskin, Notes on the 

 Exhibitions, 1859. 



T was the third day of creation. God had gathered the waters 

 together, and the earth appearing, it lay under the new-born light, 

 silent, and still, and bare. But when the light dawned for the second 

 time, He spake the word, and the brown land flashed suddenly into 

 a thousand hues. The green grass came forth; the reeds sprang up by the newly- 

 formed watercourses ; afar off, where the sun was to burn, rose the forest with all its 

 flowers in their glorious beauty, that beauty which should even cause the Creator 

 to rejoice in Heaven ; the northern pines stood up, row after row, like the pillars 

 of a temple ; the southern palm waved its lovely head ; the kingly cedars were 

 planted beneath the snows of Lebanon ; and on the slopes of the Plimalayah the 

 rhododendrons blazed in scarlet, and gold, and orange, to be kindled into greater 

 splendour when they caught the sun's first rays ; and for us, in our island home, 

 God set the daisies among the grass to gladden the hearts of little children, and 

 in that wondrous spring-time called out the primroses in the woodland dells, 

 and spread the purple heather on the mountain sides, and bade the golden furze 

 fill the air with its scent. 



And not only was the earth's greatness adorned, for its very smallest corner 



B 



