Next time you pass an old gateway or ruined wall, and notice stains of yellow and brown and grey upon it, remember that there the lichens grow; tiny plants indeed, whose beauties are revealed only by the microscope, but each one of them made by God, and given the means of living by Him, just as much as those giants of the forest of which travellers tell us such wonderful tales. You may sometimes find a rock, or the trunk of a tree, encrusted with dry lichen, and it is interesting to know that these plants when they decay form the first mould for mosses and ferns, plants which botanists think of as higher in the scale of vegetable life than the lowly lichens themselves are.
The great family of mosses is found not only near home, but even far away amid the icefields and the snow, where the reindeer searches with its horns for the white moss which is its food, and where Sir John Franklin and his devoted men gathered the black Tripe de Roche upon which they tried to live during those dark months when their ship lay fast wedged between
"… those icebergs vast,
With heads all crowned with snow,
Whose green roots sleep in the awful deep,
Two hundred fathoms low."
But prettier than these Arctic mosses are those nearer home. Talking about them makes me think of a place where I wish you and I could go together some beautiful afternoon in winter. It is a lovely little pine-wood near Bournemouth, to which some boys, with whose friends I was staying during the Christmas holidays, wished to take me to see their favourite walk.
[Illustration: ICE-BOUND]
Once when we were starting for our run, on a bright frosty morning, and I was rather hoping I should be taken to the sea, I heard them say to each other, "The Pincushion Wood; that's it; do let us go there." I wondered what kind of place this could be but when we had scrambled through some heather and come to this pine-wood, I saw at once why they had given it its name. Overhead, with their needles against the blue sky, were the pines in their dark solemn green, but under our feet the ground was bright with moss which grew, not on stones or trunks of trees, but all by itself in round balls, soft and firm and cushiony. You may be sure I was delighted with the green pincushions: we gathered a quantity of them, and I took one home with me, but though I watered it carefully, it soon lost its beauty.
These moss-balls lay at the roots of the pines, and we could pick up as many as we pleased; but generally even the most delicate mosses grasp the soil, and clasp their soft tendrils round the stones so firmly that you need a knife or a sharp stone to make them loose their hold. One of the uses of moss is to protect the rocks from the frost, and from the heavy rains which wash them away by degrees. The roots of trees, too, are cherished and warmed by the closely clinging mosses; and by holding the moisture from dew and rain, they form where they grow a little bed of soft mould, and so prepare the way for plants of larger growth.
Do you know the Trumpet-moss, with its red cups each holding its own little dewdrop? Perhaps not, for it is a rare treasure, and needs to be sought for in its own haunts; but there are many green mosses which are very beautiful, and so common that we see them upon every garden wall. There is the Hair-moss, the seeds of which are eaten by the birds, while its delicate tendrils serve as soft lining for their nests: it grows plentifully beside our streams; but far away in Lapland, during the short summer when the flowers all at once burst into bloom, it may be seen in full beauty. The Laps cut this moss in layers and dry it in the sun, to form a soft rug for them to sleep under during their cold nights. Then there is the velvety moss which, like the many-coloured lichen, loves to creep over old buildings, and make the ruined and desolate places bright with a beauty not their own.
Speaking of mosses reminds me of a story which is told us by a doctor named Mungo Park, who was nearly lost in an African desert about a hundred years ago. Day after day he had toiled on, under the burning sun, until he was almost in despair; for he had been robbed and deserted, and felt as if there was nothing left for him but to lie down and die in the wilderness, or become a prey to the savage animals which ranged over the country; and the remembrance of those at home in Scotland who would never know what had become of him, made him sick at heart. As these sad thoughts filled the traveller's mind and took away all his courage, his tired eye lighted upon a tiny tuft of moss, showing green and fair even in the parched soil of the desert. It was the Lesser Fork-moss which grows in our shady woods, and beside our ponds and ditches. We should perhaps hardly notice it unless we were shown its beauty by a microscope, for it is one of the smallest and humblest of things that grow; but as he looked at it, tears of joy came to his eyes. Silently springing up in that thirsty land, the tiny moss spoke to the lonely exile of the care of God for the very smallest of His creatures, whether the restless brown bird of which the Lord Jesus spoke when He bade His disciples not to fear, saying, "Ye are of more value than many sparrows," or the creeping moss which spreads from stone to stone.
In a moment all was changed for the weary traveller. He felt that he was not alone in that great solitude, for God who had cared for that tuft of moss, and kept it green and fresh by means of some hidden spring, surely cared for him, His own child, and would show him the right way out of that desolate place. Thus the burden and the heat were forgotten in happy thoughts of the faithfulness of God; and he went on his way with new courage, and soon found the path which he had lost; but he never forgot the message which the little moss had brought him. Though the whole plant was not larger than the tip of his finger, he managed to keep it safely through all his journeys by land and sea, and had the pleasure of seeing it flourish under our cold skies just as well as it had done beneath the burning sun of Africa. If you are fond of poetry, you may like to read some lines written by the poet McCheyne about this incident.