QUOTATIONS AND NOTES.
131
Supposed to have been written in the New Forest
in early Spring.
These are from the Novel of Marchmont.
Line 1.
As in the woods where leathery lichen weaves
Its wintry web among the sallow leaves.
Mosses and lichens are the first efforts of Nature to clothe the earth: as they decay, they form an earth that affords nourishment to the larger and more succulent vegetables: several species of lichen are found in the woods, springing up among the dead leaves, under the drip of forest trees; these, and the withered foliage of preceding years, afford shelter to the earliest wild flowers about the skirts of woods, and in hedge-rows and copses.
The Pile-wort (Ranuncula Ficaria ) and the Wood Anemone (Anemone Nemerosa ) or Windflower, blow
