with too much yellow in it to be called
cold, and too little to be called warm. And it is quite true that over
enormous districts of Europe, composed of what are technically known as
"Jura" and "mountain" limestones, and various pale sandstones, such is
generally the color of any freshly broken rock which peeps out along the
sides of their gentler hills. It becomes a little greyer as it is
colored by time, but never reaches anything like the noble hues of the
gneiss and slate; the very lichens which grow upon it are poorer and
paler; and although the deep wood mosses will sometimes bury it
altogether in golden cushions, the minor mosses, whose office is to
decorate and chequer the rocks without concealing them, are always more
meagrely set on these limestones than on the crystallines.

Sec. 6. I never have had time to examine and throw into classes the
varieties of the mosses which grow on the two kinds of rock, nor have I
been able to ascertain whether there are really numerous differences
between the species, or whether they only grow more luxuriantly on the
crystallines than on the coherents. But this is certain, that on the
broken rocks of the foreground in the crystalline groups the mosses seem
to set themselves consentfully and deliberately to the task of producing
the most exquisite harmonies of color in their power. They will not
conceal the form of the rock, but will gather over it in little brown
bosses, like small cushions of velvet made of mixed threads of dark ruby
silk and gold, rounded over more subdued films of white and grey, with
lightly crisped and curled edges like hoar frost on fallen leaves, and
minute clusters of upright orange stalks with pointed caps, and fibres
of deep green, and gold, and faint purple passing into black, all woven
together, and following with unimaginable fineness of gentle growth the
undulation of the stone they cherish, until it is charged with color so
that it can receive no more; and instead of looking rugged, or cold, or
stern, as anything that a rock is held to be at heart, it seems to be
clothed with a soft, dark leopard skin, embroidered with arabesque of
purple and silver. But in the lower ranges this is not so. The mosses
grow in more independent spots, not in such a clinging and tender way
over the whole surface; the lichens are far poorer and fewer; and the
color of the stone itself is seen more frequently; altered, if at all,
only into a little chiller grey than w