Soon another kind follows - a pale olive-green
lichen that fruits in bumps of rich brown velvet; then another
branching like a tiny tree - there is a ghostly kind like white
chalk rubbed lightly on, and yet another of small green blots, and
one like a sprinkling of scarlet snow; each, in turn, of a higher
and larger type, which in due time prepares the way for mosses
higher still.
In the less exposed places these come forth, seeking the shade,
searching for moisture, they form like small sponges on a coral
reef; but growing, spread and change to meet the changing contours
of the land they win, and with every victory or upward move, adopt
some new refined intensive tint that is the outward and visible
sign of their diverse inner excellences and their triumph. Ever
evolving they spread, until there are great living rugs of strange
textures and oriental tones; broad carpets there are of gray and
green; long luxurious lanes, with lilac mufflers under foot, great
beds of a moss so yellow chrome, so spangled with intense red sprigs,
that they might, in clumsy hands, look raw. There are knee-deep
breadths of polytrichum, which blends in the denser shade into a
moss of delicate crimson plush that baffles description.
Down between the broader masses are bronze-green growths that run
over each slight dip and follow down the rock crannies like streams
of molten brass. Thus the whole land is overlaid with a living,
corrosive mantle of activities as varied as its hues.
For ages these toil on, improving themselves, and improving the
country by filing down the granite and strewing the dust around
each rock.
The frost, too, is at work, breaking up the granite lumps; on every
ridge there is evidence of that - low, rounded piles of stone which
plainly are the remnants of a boulder, shattered by the cold. Thus,
lichen, moss, and frost are toiling to grind the granite surfaces
to dust.
Much of this powdered rock is washed by rain into the lakes and
ponds; in time these cut their exits down, and drain, leaving each
a broad mud-flat. The climate mildens and the south winds cease
not, so that wind-borne grasses soon make green meadows of the
broad lake-bottom flats.
The process climbs the hill-slopes; every little earthy foothold
for a plant is claimed by some new settler, until each low hill is
covered to the top with vegetation graded to its soil, and where
the flowering kinds cannot establish themselves, the lichen pioneers
still maintain their hold. Rarely, in the landscape, now, is any of
the primitive colour of the rocks; even the tall, straight cliffs
of Aylmer are painted and frescoed with lichens that flame and
glitter with purple and orange, silver and gold.
