In truth you'll find it hard to say
How it could ever have been young
It looks so old and grey.
—Wordsworth.
THE LITTLE OLD MAN OF THE ROCK
Some say it was Leif Ericson, some say it was Columbus, but I say it was The Little Old Man of the Rock.
And I go further. I say he not only discovered America but Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the islands of the sea. I'll tell you why.
[I. How Little Mr. Lichen Discovered the World]
As everybody knows, we must all eat to live, and how could either Columbus or anybody else—except Mr. Lichen—have done much discovering in a world where there was nothing to eat? When the continents first rose out of the sea[2] there wasn't anything to eat but rock. Rock, to be sure, makes very good eating if you have the stomach for it, as Mr. Lichen has. It contains sulphur, phosphorus, silica, potash, soda, iron, and other things that plants are fond of, but ordinary plants can't get these things out of the rock—let alone human beings and other animals; and that's why Mr. Lichen had the first seat at the table and always does.
On bare granite boulders in the fields, on the rocky ruins at the foot of mountains, and even on the mountain tops themselves, on projecting rocks far above the snow line, you find the lichens. On rock of every kind they settle down and get to work. They never complain of the climate—hot or cold, moist or dry. When the land goes dry they simply knock off, and then when a little moisture is to be had they're busy again. A little goes a long way with members of the family who live in regions where water is scarce. Indeed, most of them get along with hardly any moisture at all. The very hardiest of them are so small that a whole colony looks like a mere stain upon the rock.
While lichens are generally gray—they seem to have been born old, these queer little men of the rock—you can find some that are black, others bright yellow or cream-colored. Others are pure white or of various rusty and leaden shades. Some are of the color of little mice. To make out any shapes in these tiny forms, you must look very close; and if you have a hand lens you will be surprised to find that this fairy-land of the lichens isn't so drab as it seems to the naked eye. For there are flower gardens—the tiny spore cups. Some of them are vivid crimson and, standing out on a background of pure white, they're very lovely. Some of the science people believe the colors attract the minute insects that the lens shows wandering around in these fairy flower gardens. But just what the insects can be there for nobody knows, since the lichens are scattered, not by insects, but by the wind.
As a rule lichens grow only in open, exposed places, although some are like the violets—they enjoy the shade. Some varieties grow on trees, some on the ground, others on the bleached bones of animals in fields and wastes and on the bones of whales cast up by the sea.