If you want to continue this interesting study and become Learned Lichenologists, you will be interested to know that there are a lot of things to be learned, including not only no end of delightful names, such as _Endocarpon_, _Collema_, _Pertusaria_, not to speak of _Xanthoria parietina_, and loads of others, but there are still things unknown that _you_ may be able some day to find out. For instance, while they know that the two kinds of vegetation that together make a lichen, feed and water each other, it's not known exactly _how_ they do it; although the "Britannica" article has a picture showing the two partners in the very act of going into partnership. The article in the "Americana" shows some striking forms of lichens, and how nature from these very dawnings of life begins to dream of beauty. You will be surprised at the forms shown in the "Americana," they are either so graceful, symmetrical, or picturesque. One of them looks like a very elaborate helmet decoration, or plume of a knight. This article also tells what an incredible number of species of lichens there are--enough to make quite a good-sized town, if they were all real people. It also tells why the orange and yellow lichens take to the shady side of the rock; and something about how the lichens get those remarkable decorations and sculpturings, and what the weather has to do with it. There you will also get a probable explanation of the fact that the manna which the Israelites found on the ground in the morning appeared so suddenly. In the article in the "International" you will find another picture of how the two partners--the fungus and the alga--make the lichen, and you will learn that Mr. Lichen's name, like Mr. Lichen himself, is centuries old; being the very name given him by the Greeks, and afterward by the Romans. In the "Country Life Reader" there is an article on the soil that has a very close relationship to the subject of the lichens and their work. It tells, among other things, about the value of humus--decayed leaves, grass, etc.--to the soil. It was the lichens, you know, who _started_ the humus-making business. The article in the reader on "Planting Time," by L. H. Bailey, expresses the wonder we must all feel when we stop to think about it, at the magic work of the soil in changing a little speck of a seed into a plant. CHAPTER II (FEBRUARY) Behold a strange monster our wonder engages! If dolphin or lizard your wit may defy. Some thirty feet long, on the shore of Lyme-Regis With a saw for a jaw and a big staring eye. A fish or a lizard? An Ichthyosaurus, With a big goggle-eye and a very small brain, And paddles like mill-wheels in chattering chorus Smiting tremendous the dread-sounding main.