"She sped along, I in the lurch, A lost and panting stranger, Till, lo! I found me at the Church, She'd led me out of danger. 'Ring up the clerk,' she said; 'yet hark! Methinks here comes the pass'n; He'll make us one, then thou art done; He'll thee securely fasten.' 20, 18, 16, etc. "'Man is a lost and vagrant clown That should at once be pounded,' She said, and laid the matter down With arguments well grounded. For years a score, and even more, I've lain in wedlock's fetter, Faith! she was right; here, tied up tight, I could not have fared better. 20, 18, 16, etc." An industry on Dartmoor that has become completely extinct is the collection of lichen from the rocks for the use of the dyers. There exists in MS. an interesting book by a Dr. Tripe, of Ashburton, recording what he saw and did each day, at the close of last century. He says that he observed women scraping off the lichen from the rocks near the Drewsteignton cromlech. This they sold to the dyers, who dried it, reduced it to powder, and treated it with a solution of tin in _aqua fortis_ and another ingredient, when a most vivid scarlet dye was produced. The lichen is called botanically _Lichinoides saxatile_. Other lichens were employed to give purple and yellow colours. The cudbear and crab's-eye lichens (_Lecanora tartarea_ and _Lecanora parella_) gave a dye of a royal purple, and the two species called _Parmelia saxatilis_ and _Parmelia omphalodes_ gave a yellowish brown. Moss also was employed for the purpose; the _Hypnum cupressiforme_ yielded a rich reddish brown. "Lichens and mosses," says Mr. Parfitt, "are the pioneers of the vegetable kingdom in attacking the hard and almost impenetrable rocks, and so preparing the way for the more noble plants--the trees and shrubs--by gradual disintegration, and by adding their own dead bodies to the soil, enrich it for the food of others."[25] It is marvellous to see how the lichen attaches itself to the granite. A harshly glaring piece that the quarrymen have cut is touched with fine specks that spread into black and crocus-yellow circles, and tone down the stone to a sober tint. Unhappily of late years there has been much firing of the furze and heather on the moor, and the flames destroy the beautiful lichens and mosses, and leave the old stones white and ghostly, not to be reclothed with the old tints for centuries.