FIGURE 4. food they derive from the watery vapors in the air, from the blessed rain, and frequent dews. While in some varieties broad leaves cover the surface, and here and there only little deep dishes arise, full of precious though almost invisible seed, others present most tiny and withered leaves, but expand their seed-bearing vessels to larger size and most graceful forms. They abound already in the temperate zone, and furnish large masses of turf; but they increase in number as they approach the inhospitable North, until they finally become the sole representative there of the vegetable kingdom. Bearing on high their elegant goblets, from which they derive their name (Cledonia pyxidata), as in Figure 4, they appear to the naked eye like dwarfish shrubs, or, if we look at them closely, like whitish-gray corals with most diminutive branches. The little cups or goblets are open at the top, and upon the edge there sit, in a circle around, the prettiest little beads of handsome brown or scarlet. Many a fair wreath is woven of these socalled mosses, and sold in the great cities of Europe, and few handsomer ornaments can be found in the fair kingdom of Flora. Very different appear, at first sight, the long, venerable graybeards that hang from the lofty branches of ancient firs and spruces, or from the still more imposing hoary-headed cypresses of our South. Nothing can exceed the picturesque air which they give to the old giants of the forest as they now dance wildly in the summer breeze around the grand tree that has withstood there the storms of uncounted ages, and now hang silent and solemn from the branches of the tallest of all whom the lightning of heaven has shattered and broken. As the pale light of the moon falls upon their vague, floating outline, weird, woeful fancies enter the mind, and a thousand spectres and spirits are seen hovering under the ghastly garlands. These also are but lichens of larger size; and as their tiny, thread-like stems and branches are too feeble to stand, they hang thus, in apparently listless despair, from their high, airy home. A smaller sister, the common Beard Lichen (Usnea barbata), as seen in Figure 5, is found in all forests, especially where evergreens have the majority, and most abundantly in mountainous regions. This, with some other varieties of lichens, constitute the "idle moss" of Shakspeare; as, in fact, nothing is more common among our poets than to mingle lichens and mosses without distinction. Thus Southey also says it is "Not undelightful now to roam The wild heath sparkling on the sight; The forest's ample rounds; FIGURE 5. And see the spangled branches shine, Or o'er the gray stone spreads." scope. Only extremely thin layers can well be examined, and then they reveal to us the longunsuspected fact, that their apparently most simple form, whether it be like a shrub or a Stranger still are those children of this much-beard, a mere crust or a many-branched tree, despised family, that look little better than a mere crust-now thin, like the merest dash of green color, and now reaching a more respectable thickness. They also cover rocks and trees, though rarely the bare earth, and adorn them with their quaint outlines and bright yellow color. One of these simplest of lichens is not unlike a map of German principalities, and hence has its name of Geographical Lichen (Lecidea geographica). It is this tiny plant (Figure 6) which Alexander Von Humboldt has FIGURE 6. always consists of three distinct layers. The middle part is ever found to contain large globular cells of greenish color, while the outer and inner layers consist of lengthened cells, which often assume the form of long threads or tiny branches. The tender filaments, of most varied and often very beautiful patterns, penetrate the bark upon which such lichens grow, and soon interweave with each other in a manner resembling a closely-knit net-work. Their spores, which here also replace the seed-grains of higher plants, grow in long, club-shaped branches, in which they lie closely packed in two rows. These quaint store-houses at last open at the end, and send forth a vast number of diminutive grains, that look for all the world like stains or tiny dots on the lighter surface. Under the microscope, however, they assume truly wondrous shapes, and are seen now as round or semi-circular buttons, and now as flat, shield-shaped discs; at one time they look like tiny cups and saucers with upturned edges, at another like long hollow tubes. Some are said even to resemble Arabic writing with amazing fidelity. In its first childhood the fruit of lichens is always found in the shape of a well-closed globule, which contains as its kernel a curious contrivance for the production of sporules, the socalled thalamium. With many lichens it retains this form until the spores are fully matured, and then it either bursts suddenly asunder, or it permits them to escape through a tiny opening at the end. With other lichens, however, the young fruit opens very soon, and spreads out into the form of a plate or shield, over the upper side of which is stretched the thalamium (Figure 7). Such is the fruit of made so interesting by discovering it at a height of 18,096 feet, the last child of the vegetable kingdom at that unsurpassed elevation, close to the top of Chimborazo. For as the algae descend to a depth in the vast ocean of which we can form as yet but a vague and uncertain idea, so the tiny lichens ascend to regions where all other life has long since ceased to exist. Only ten feet below the ever-pure peak of the Jungfrau, and close to the eternal snows of Mont Blanc, there appear still large numbers of small but vigorous lichens. They alone are enabled-we know not yet for what great purpose-to bear the almost incredible rarification of air at such a tremendous height, as the algae down in the deep sea thrive and prosper under a pressure of the common cup-lichen, of which a small part 375 atmospheres! And how closely they cling is seen in Figure 8, moderately magnified, while to the hard stone they hold in such loving embrace! As if Nature had varnished over the rough sides of her neglected children, these lichens can not be loosened from their home by the most careful efforts. The knife does not succeed in detaching them, or at least they perish in the attempt, and are scattered about as shapeless powder. The chisel itself must come to our aid, and cut off a chip of the stone to enable us to bring the tiny plant under the microscope. Unfortunately, however, the substance of which these little plants consist is so dense and solid that even the diminutive walls of their tiny cells seem to defy the power of the micro FIGURE 7. FIGURE 8. in Figure 9 a single spore is presented eight | their hard, tough skin lies close to the bark of hundred times larger the trees, and thus assumes the grayish-brown hues of the latter. But as soon as moisture gladdens their little leaves, they swell and soften; they become now transparent, and suffer the pretty green cells in their interior to shine through the outer membrane. Others, again, who live on lofty mountain heights, or on sandy heaths, in the Steppes of the Kirghise, or on the plains of the East, are not seen at all durWith the first warm rain, FIGURE 9. than in reality, consisting of two distinct cells in their common home, and containing tiny drops of oil in their inner chambers. Very few lichens, however, have as yet been discovered which bear real fruit of this kind. It seems as if they could not mature ex-ing the dry season. cept under peculiarly favorable circumstances, however, they rise and swell of a sudden, so that the credulous children of those regions fancy the mysterious plants, which now cover the ground to the height of several inches, have miraculously fallen from the skies. True Proletarians of the vegetable kingdom, they care not for the future, but live only in the enjoyment of the present, and providing not, as most other plants do, for the days of want, they must needs spend a large part of their life in silent slumber. All the more they seem to rejoice in their brief time of enjoyment. How they abound and luxuriate in the tropical re and their fruits do not even appear but at an extremely old age. The spores, moreover, grow with surprising slowness, and form thus a strange, striking contrast with the same productions in fungi. It is, therefore, but rarely that we can meet with fruit-bearing lichens; and were it not for the wondrous wisdom displayed in all the provinces of this great, though often invisible kingdom, these humble plants would appear but little secured against utter extinction. But lichens also, like mosses and alge, have still another method of increasing their num-gions during all winter! Then is their time to bers. Even the naked eye can see under the carefully-raised upper layer a slight green tissue, which the microscope shows us to consist of a large mass of diminutive globular cells. These have been called Gonidia, because they also serve to produce germs when detached from the mother plant. After a while-we know not exactly at what period of their existence-they make their way through the upper layer, and soon change into new individuals, of the same kind as their parents. Hardy and long-lived as all lichens are, they find in these qualities also a better protection than even the uncounted millions of sporules afford to their humbler brethren, the fungi. Their cells, as we mentioned, are of strong, stout fabric, and possess, moreover, an astounding faculty of reviving after a long and deep slumber. Many love to live upon a soil but little adapted to retain moisture; others, like the Lazzaroni of Naples, will not work even to live. Carelessly and listlessly they lie in the bright sunshine, and implore with Stoic patience, by their miserable appearance, the pity of passing clouds. In these times of want and drought they shrink and shrivel until nothing seems farther from them than life. Pale and rigid, they are the very images of desolation, and crumble under the hand into impalpable dust. Yet no thrive and to prosper; and then they display all the wondrous beauty with which even their humbler races were endowed by an all-bountiful Maker. Thus they pass, in ever-changing fate, like man himself, from darkness to light, from rest to activity, and often reach an amazing old age. Some of the crust lichens that grow upon rocks, it is believed, have alternated in this manner, between life and death, during more than a thousand years; and yet they are ever ready still, under a gentle shower, to unfold their graceful leaves, and to blossom anew in brilliant green colors. Lichens are, moreover, very far from being idle intruders upon the province of others, nor even mere ornaments woven into the bright carpet that covers our earth. Already humbler animals subsist upon these tiny plants. There is, among others, an odd kind of caterpillar, who assumes the greenish garb of lichens, and marks it with black spots and stripes, until he so closely resembles the bed on which he rests, that only most careful research can discover the strange intruder. Birds, also, and especially humming birds, know well the art to cover their nests so skillfully all around with tender lichens, that only the practiced eye remains undeceived. The well-known Reindeer Moss (Cladonia sooner has an early dew or a soft rain-nay, rangiferina), as seen in Figure 10, sustains for even a faint mist-merely touched their un- months the life of a whole noble race of anisightly form, than they begin drinking in moist-mals, without whom a large portion of our globe ure with amusing avidity, and, lo and behold! ere many minutes are passed, they expand and increase, until, as if by the touch of a magic wand, they have recovered their fresh, joyful color and youthful vigor. Thus they would hardly appear the same plants in their days of dryness and after a rain. Even the common lichens that grow in our orchards look ordinarily as if dressed in sad colored livery, because would be but a desert, unfit to be the abode of man. When long, merciless winter has covered all the wide waste regions with his mournful pall, and the blood-red disk of the sun hardly dares to show itself above the horizon, life seems extinct, and death alone to reign there supreme. As far as the eye can reach, nothing is seen but the bare, bleak plain, without a tree, a plant, or an herb. Far down in the lowest dens the summer sun has thawed the frozen ground for a few inches, but on the sides and slopes of gentler elevation nothing but ice and snow is apparently found; yet here it is that the heavenimplanted instinct of the sagacious reindeer leads them to dig with powerful hoof and broad-branching antlers, in order to find there, deep under the snow, their longprepared food. Thus they live, for the larger part of the year, on the small, simple plants, and eat the tender, whitish-gray leaves with the same relish with which the goat browses on the rich, fragrant grasses of Alpine meadows. For all lichens are amply endowed with starch; and with this not only most of the cells are filled, but even the walls themselves consist of nutritious starch. Hence the peculiar power of the Iceland Moss (Cetraria Islandica), Figure 11. A green and drew from them their ample stores of medicinal bitter. Physicians soon adopted it generally, and prescribed it as an admirable substitute for the more costly bark of America. From their wealth in starch comes also the nutritious character of the far-famed swallownests of Chinese islands, paid by their weight in gold, which consist mainly of tiny lichens. ish-brown, almost unsightly growth, but slight- | the peculiar chemical nature of these lichens, ly attached to its early home, the low grounds of northern regions, and bearing almost invisible fruit, it is still the great comfort of many a poor sufferer, the help of the ablest physician. Even the common wall lichen above mentioned proved a friend to man in times of need, and when least expected. During the great wars of Napoleon, when the whole Continent was under embargo, and the almost indispensable quinine could not be imported into Germany, chemists and druggists remembered FIGURE 11 But these humble and little-known plants serve man not merely to tickle a fastidious palate or to soothe his suffering in the hour of sickness; they actually support him in times of need. A leather-like lichen grows largely in the limestone mountains of Northern Asia, and serves in times of famine, at least, as food to the roving Tartars. In the polar regions of Europe similar lichens are carefully soaked and boiled down to free them of their original bitterness, and then cooked with milk or baked into bread. Scanty lichens of this kind, called Tripe de Roche, which had to be dug out from under sheltering loads of snow, were, not for days but for whole months, the sole food of the unfortunate Franklin and his companions. Surely such usefulness ought not to be ungratefully ignored. We are all well aware that thousands of Guarana Indians depend upon the Mauritius palm for their food and drink, their clothing and dwelling; that the gentle children of the South Sea Islands are in like manner supported by the cocoa palm; and the Hindoo, who lives on vegetables only, by his banana. The dweller in the desert points proudly to the grateful date-tree as the noblest hood, and nothing had ever interrupted an afamong plants, and honors it with the most flat-fection which both of them cherished with petering title of the "Camel of Plants." But culiar jealousy. It was a new case of Damon how few of us ever think of the humble, mi- and Pythias, Orestes and Pylades, which their croscopic lichen as deserving a place by the friendship presented; and this deep attachment side of the noble palm and the ancient banana seemed to increase as they entered manhood, among the benefactors of mankind! and cement itself more vigorously with the passing years. THE TWO KATES; OR, FIRST AND A TRUE STORY OF OLD NORTHUMBERLAND. I. MY AUTHORITY. They were both orphans, and the heads of their respective houses. Landon had, however, a brother, a mere child of about five or six, and Digby a sister of the same age. With the exception of these children and the young I WAS conversing the other day with a friend men themselves, no scions of the great old fam upon the subject of family traditions and their capabilities for the purposes of romance, when, at the end of one of my homilies, he said: "Well, I heard a family story not long since, which appeared to me at the time very curious. It has the further advantage of being entirely true; of this there can not be any doubt." ilies remained; and this fact, doubtless, drew the friends more closely together. Deprived of father and mother, and with few or no relatives living, they expended upon each other that affection which a home circle would have absorbed; and nothing but the actual tie of blood was wanting to make them brothers. Landon spent at least half of his time at Riverview; and when he departed, he carried Digby with him to the Neck; and here, in the great who knew the son of the house of the Landon family, they kept bachechief actor by the singular marriage I am going|lor's hall in grand style, following a hundred to tell you about—that is to say, if you are will- sports-fox-hunting, sitting up late at tric-trac, ing to listen." sailing on the broad river-passing thus, day "I shall be glad to do so. Let me have after day, and often week after week, in the every detail." idlest and merriest manner imaginable. "Curious and true!" I said; "but from whom did you hear it ?" "From Dr. And thus I heard the following story, which I think the reader will agree with my friend in considering very curious. I thought at first of making it the groundwork of a volume; but, upon mature reflection, this course did not seem advisable. The paucity of characters might make the narrative, thus lengthened out, monotonous, and all the charm of truth and reality would be lost, from the necessity of adding fanciful particulars. I thought it best, therefore, to avoid the habit of Monsieur Dumas, who would certainly expand it into five or six volumes, and relate the story just as I heard it. In the main event it is not modified at all, though, of course, the names are changed. I have not felt at liberty to use proper names-the descendants of the personages residing on the soil to the present day. I think the story, frail as the materials may seem, will be of interest to those who like the veritable family legends of old days. At least, I shall add another page to the book of human nature; for I repeat, in entire good faith, that the relation is actually true. IL-TWO FRIENDS AND A WOMAN. The estates of "Riverview" and "Landon's Neck" are situated in the old County of Northumberland, at the mouth of the Potomac, which here expands almost into an arm of the sea, as it falls into the Chesapeake. Between the two friends no question of superiority of character or endowment had ever arisen; but Digby tacitly yielded to his friend, without ever dreaming that there was any sacrifice in so doing. In person Digby was slight and fair-haired, with a complexion as fine as a woman's, clear, blue eyes, and the frank and ingenuous expression of a boy. Landon, on the contrary, was tall and dark, with brilliant black eyes, an olive cheek, and hair like the wing of a raven. He had little of the boyish vivacity of his friend-indeed, we may say none at all-but the pensive and somewhat satirical smile habitual with him communicated to the firm lips a striking attraction, and the careless inclination of the head forward, which not seldom characterizes vigorous natures, following their dreams for want of some great stimulant to action, added to the grace of a carriage which a number of young ladies thought the finest in the world. The young men tranquilly pursued this happy life of sport and dreams upon their great estates until they reached the age of twenty-one. Hitherto they had found in each other's society all that they desired-no aspiration pointed to a different existence. But all at once that disturber of friendships in all ages, a woman, came to add a new element to their lives. The young lady in question was the only daughter of a neighboring planter-and with that unanimity which had always characterized them the two friends fell in love with her at the same moment. Upon these estates, in the old colonial times, long prior to the Revolution, lived St. George Landon and John Digby, better known as Jack Digby. Kate Temple was worthy to inspire a sentiThe young men had been friends from child- ment of the most chivalrous and devoted affec |