"Sad, faint, and weary, on the sand
Our traveller sat him down; his hand
Covered his burning head;
Above, beneath, behind, around,
No resting for the eye he found—
All nature seemed as dead.
"One tiny tuft of moss alone,
Mantling with freshest green a stone,
Fixed his delighted gaze;
Through bursting tears of joy he smiled,
And while he raised the tendril wild,
His lips o'erflowed with praise.
"'Oh, shall not He who keeps thee green
Here in the waste, unknown, unseen,
Thy fellow-exile save?
He who commands the dew to feed
Thy gentle flower, can surely lead
Me from a scorching grave.'"
The poem has many more verses, but I think these the prettiest. Moss has been spoken of by a poet as the "nest of time"; it has also been called "nature's livery," because the earth is clothed with it; and I have read that Mungo Park's little teacher may be found upon many a wall near London, and also clinging to those great stones which were once part of the walls of far away Jerusalem. It is nice to think that the little green plants, which we have such reason to love—because they are brightest and best in the winter-time, when all our
"Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining,
Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day,
Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining,
Buds that open only to decay."
have faded—grow all the world over; even down in the mines of Sweden the shining Feather-moss is said to light up the darkness with a tiny glimmer of its own.
When we were speaking of the fossil animals which are found hidden deep in the "crust" of the earth, you may remember that I told you that upon the hard grey-coloured clay which forms the roof of coal-mines beautifully traced patterns of ferns are sometimes found. I have heard that half the plants the remains of which are found buried in the coal-measures are ferns, but ferns which are now known to us as but three feet in height, appear in those early times of our earth's history to have been grand trees with trunks three feet through, and fronds of great length.
If you want to see tree-ferns growing wild now, you must go to New Zealand or Australia, or to the south of India: but you may perhaps some day have an opportunity of looking at pictures of some of the giant mare's-tails, and other plants with beautifully sculptured stems, of which traces have been found in our own English coal-fields; meantime, look at the vivid word-picture which Dr. Buckland has given of what he saw in a Bohemian mine. He says: "The most elaborate imitation of living foliage upon the painted ceilings of Italian palaces bears no comparison with the beauteous proportions of extinct vegetable forms with which the galleries of these instructive coal-mines are overhung…. The effect is heightened by the contrast of the coal-black colour of these vegetables with the light groundwork of the rock to which they are attached"—for you must not forget that it is upon the roof of the mine that the impressions of the plants which have been turned into coal are found, not upon the coal itself, though even there they may be discovered by a microscope.
And now leaving the mosses and lichens, ferns and mushrooms, we will turn to the "herb yielding seed," and speak of the great family of grasses; and to begin with I will quote for you two verses which were brought to me by the children when I had asked for texts about grass.
This is one: "If God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?"