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As a practical lichenologist, when one species is rare or lacking in the neighbourhood, he is able to fall back on others, varying greatly in shape, colour and texture. And, if the impossible happened and lichen failed entirely, I credit the Chaffinch with sufficient talent to be able to dispense with it and to build the foundations of his nest with some coarse moss or other.
Mosses, ferns, and lichen decorated the path; all the birds greeted him in friendship, and sang their purest melodies. The sky was blue, the sun bright, the air perfumed for him; Belshazzar, always true to his name, protected every footstep; Ajax, the shimmering green and gold wonder, came up the hill to meet him; the white doves circled above his head.
"For indifference to the things of this world we find the lichen symbolizing solitude; for chastity, the orange-flower and the lily; for charity, the water-lily, the rose, and the saffron flower so say Raban Maur and the Anonymous monk of Clairvaux; for temperance, the lettuce, which also stands for fasting; for meekness, mignonette; for watchfulness, the elder, signifying zeal; and thyme, which, with its sharp, pungent aroma, symbolizes activity.
It was covered with lichen and moss, and showed gaps here and there where the mortar had crumbled away and the stones fallen in a heap upon the ground; while in other places, the tangled growth of ivy vines almost entirely obscured the stonework. The Scouts kept to the road until they came to a break in the wall which formed the gateway.
They stand out from dark recesses filled with alder and beech and ivy-mantled firs, rising in bold but graceful outline; columns of silver, touched here and there with the sad gold and green shades of lichen and moss. The moss that mingles with golden lichens is of a soft, velvety hue, like a mantle of half drapery on a beautiful white statue.
Jean de Luz, Biarritz, Bayonne, and so on northwards till the vision fails. On the other side rise in convoluting swells the mountains of Navarre and Guipúzcoa, their slopes dyed in every shade of green from grass and lichen, shrub and tree, except where the naked rocks, bursting with ore, expose themselves.
The golden sunshine of the spring morning was deadened to a sombre tone in the shadowy courts of the Capuchin convent. The reddish brown of the walls was flecked with gold and orange spots of lichen; and here and there, in crevices, tufts of grass, or even a little bunch of gold-blooming flowers, looked hardily forth into the shadowy air.
Surrounding it was a high wall, built partly of flint and partly of brick, and ringed all over with grey lichen and brown spots of bearded moss, that bore witness to the touch of many winds and rains. Tufts of pale grass, and gilliflowers, and travelling stone-crop, hung from the wall, and driblets of ivy ran broadening to the outer ground.
It was a wonderful liturgy, as grotesque as it was beautiful like an old cathedral in all styles of architecture, stored with shabby antiquities and side-shows and overgrown with moss and lichen a heterogeneous blend of historical strata of all periods, in which gems of poetry and pathos and spiritual fervor glittered and pitiful records of ancient persecution lay petrified.
A similar contrast was seen between the level green meadow, in which the ruins were situated, and the large timber-trees which were scattered over it, compared with the precipitous banks which arose at a short distance around, partly fringed with light and feathery underwood, partly rising in steeps clothed with purple heath, and partly more abruptly elevated into fronts of grey rock, chequered with lichen, and with those hardy plants which find root even in the most arid crevices of the crags.
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