pers; the floor consisted of growing
ever-green shrubs. Moss and lichen grew in the crevices and held them
together. The roof was made entirely of creepers, Virginia creeper,
Caprifolium, and ivy, and it was so thick that not a drop of rain
could come through. A number of bee-hives stood before the door, but
butterflies lived in them instead of bees; just think of the lovely
sight when they swarmed!

"I don't like torturing bees," explained the old man. "And, moreover, I
consider them not at all pretty; they look like hairy coffee-beans and
sting like adders."

And then they went into the garden.

"Now, you may read in the book of nature and learn the secrets and
sensibilities of the plants. But you must not ask questions, only listen
to what I say and answer me.... Now, look here, little one, on this
grey stone something is growing which looks like grey paper. This is the
first thing which grows when the rock becomes damp. It grows mouldy, you
see, and the mould is called lichen. Here are two kinds: one looks like
the horns of a reindeer, it is called reindeer-moss, and the reindeer
feeds on it; and the other is called Iceland-moss, and looks like...
now, what does it look like?"

"It looks like lungs, anyhow it says so in the natural history book."

"Quite right; looked at through a magnifying glass, it has exactly that
appearance, and that is how people came to think of using it as a remedy
for all sorts of diseases of the chest. Later, when the lichen has
gathered enough vegetable soil, the mosses appear; they have quite
simple flowers and grow seed. They are not unlike ice-flowers, but they
are also like heather and fir trees and all sorts of other things, for
all plants are related. The wall-moss here looks like a fir tree, but
it has seed cases, like a poppy, only rather more simple. Once moss has
begun to grow an a spot, heather is not very long in coming. And if you
examine heather through a strong magnifying-glass, it is like milk-wort,
Epilobium in Latin or a rhododendron, or like an elm tree, which is
nothing more nor less than a huge nettle.

"Now, we have a perfect covering for the rocks, and in this mould
everything will grow. Man has domesticated a number of plants, but
nature herself has directed him which to take and how to use their is
so extraordinary as the colour and ornaments which the flowers have
acquired to tell the bees where the honey is. You have often seen an ear
of rye, which shows