k in his journey through the African desert. By the steady and
long-continued efforts of this fragile little plant, high mountains have
been leveled, which no human power could have brought from their towering
heights. Adamantine rocks have been reduced to pebbles; cliffs have
mouldered in heaps upon the shore; and castles and strongholds raised by
the hand of man have proved weak and powerless under the ravages of this
tiny agent, and become scenes of ruin and desolation--the habitations of
the owl and the bat. Yet who, to look upon the lichen, would think it
could do all this?--so modest that we might almost take it for a part of
the ground upon which we tread. Can this, we exclaim, be a leveler of
mountains and mausoleums! Contemplate its unobtrusive, humble course;
endowed by nature with an organization capable of vegetating in the most
unpropitious circumstances--requiring indeed little more than the mere
moisture of the atmosphere to sustain it, the lichen sends forth its small
filamentous roots and clings to the hard, dry rock with a most determined
pertinacity. These little fibres, which can scarcely be discerned with the
naked eye, find their way into the minute crevices of the stone; now,
firmly attached, the rain-drops lodge upon their fronds or membranaceous
scales on the surface, and filtering to their roots, moisten the space
which they occupy, and the little plant is then enabled to work itself
further into the rock; the dimensions of the aperture become enlarged, and
the water runs in in greater quantities. This work, carried on by a legion
ten thousand strong, soon pierces the stony cliff with innumerable
fissures, which being filled with rain, the frost causes it to split, and
large pieces roll down to the levels beneath, reduced to sand, or to
become soil for the growth of a more exalted vegetation.--This, of course,
is a work of time--of generations, perhaps, measured by the span of human
life; but, undaunted, the mission of the humble lichen goes on and
prospers. Is not this a lesson worth learning from the book of nature?
Does it not contain much that we might profit by, and set us an example
that we should do well to imitate? "Persevere, and despise not little
things," is the lesson we draw from it ourselves, and the poorest and
humblest reader of this page will be able to accomplish great things, if
he will take the precept to himself, engrave it upon his heart, or hold it
constantly before him; dep