The houses were all wooden, weather-beaten, and gray, and had great patches of yellow lichen on their walls and roofs; thin rims of starved-looking grass edged the streets, and stray blades stood up here and there among the old sunken cobble-stones which made the pavements.

A dark oak-ribbed ceiling; walls of pale fawn-yellow; an open window, showing a corner of rich olive-stone wall, enamelled with golden lichens, orange and green combs of polypody, pink and grey tufts of pellitory, all glowing in the sunlight.

But most beautiful is the hue of slate, when, shining wet in the sunshine after a summer shower, its blue is brought out in rich contrast by golden spots of circular lichen, whose spores, I presume, have travelled with it off its native mountains.

The play of sunshine on the orange-colored lichens interested her more than the inscriptions they covered; and while their guide was telling the story of mouldering arches, she was looking through them at the clear blue sky and the soft outline of the hills.

What community of faculty can there be between the brightly-coloured lichen, which so nearly resembles a mere mineral incrustation of the bare rock on which it grows, and the painter, to whom it is instinct with beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds with knowledge?

Some shy wildflower or fern, or brilliant-tinted leaf, a bit of moss, a curious lichen, a deserted bird's-nest, a strange fragment of rock, a shining pebble, would catch her passing glance and reveal to her quick artistic sense possibilities of use which were quaint, original, characteristic.

Yet they seemed to assume a sort of fantastic kindred with the objects to which they adhered: thus, on the leaves of spruce-trees and on delicate lichens they seemed like reduplications of the original growth, and they made the broad, fiat leaves of the arbor-vitae fully twice as wide as before.

Its sides were richly sculptured with figures and leafy scrolls and arabesques, into which the sly-footed lichens with quiet growth had so insinuated themselves as in some places almost to obliterate the original design; while, round the place where the water fell, a veil of ferns and maiden's-hair, studded with tremulous silver drops, vibrated to its soothing murmur.

those which cover the ground, the hairy lichen, Crocella tinctoria, which is employed in dying, and which this island furnishes in abundance.

It was only a rough wicker-basket which she had filled with damp plushy moss, and half-buried in it clusters of plumy fern, delicate brown and ashen lichens, masses of forest-leaves all shaded green with a few crimson tints.

A quiet time he has of it up there in the golden Italian air, in petrified act of blessing, while orange lichens and green mosses from year to year embroider quaint patterns on the seams of his sacerdotal vestments, and small tassels of grass volunteer to ornament the folds of his priestly drapery, and golden showers of blossoms from some more hardy plant fall from his ample sleeve-cuffs.

I had a lamp, and at my forehead the lighted candle, and I went on quickly, seeing it useless now to choose my steps where there was no choice, through a passage incrusted, roof and sides, with a scabrous petrified lichen, the roof low for some ninety yards, covered with down-looking cones, like an inverted forest of children's toy-trees.

Flower-pot mould Danked and decayed the shaded roof; The porch was punk; the clapboards spanned With ruffled lichens gray or green; Red coral-moss was not aloof; And mid dry leaves green dead-man's-hand Groped toward that chapel in Mosby-land.

I had a lamp, and at my forehead the lighted candle, and I went on quickly, seeing it useless now to choose my steps where there was no choice, through a passage incrusted, roof and sides, with a scabrous petrified lichen, the roof low for some ninety yards, covered with down-looking cones, like an inverted forest of children's toy-trees.

What spirit lures the bindweed's cup Unfaltering on? Calls even the starry lichen to climb By agelong inches endless Time?

As he talked I thought of the ample spaces of his Museum where the whole great scheme is made manifest to the eye, the structure of man, then the slow gradation downward, the immense series of flowers and plants counterfeited in glass continuing the line unbroken, down to the ultimate lichen, all but part and parcel of the ledge to which it clings.

Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seed.

Then in places the slabs were slippery with wet lichen and Lister's ordinary walking boots could get no grip.

225 No spicy nutmeg scents the vernal gales, Nor towering plaintain shades the mid-day vales; No grassy mantle hides the sable hills, No flowery chaplet crowns the trickling rills; Nor tufted moss, nor leathery lichen creeps 230 In russet tapestry o'er the crumbling steeps.

One of the sisters had a poultry-yard in it, which he could see: the wall around it was of stone covered with a brown feathery lichen, which every rooster in that yard was determined to stand on, or perish in the attempt; and Holmes would watch, through the quiet, bright mornings, the frantic ambition and the uproarious exultation of the successful aspirant with an amused smile.