_Cistopteris fragillis_ and _C. dentata_ are common, and the more delicate _C. Alpina_ is not rare. The noble _Osmunda regalis_ keeps to the warmer valleys. The moonwort abounds in the upper pastures. The club-mosses (_Lycopodium_), which are found in Great Britain, are common in most parts of the Alps, especially the _L. selago_, which grows almost up to the verge of the snows. Lower down is the delicate _L. velveticum_, which creeps among the damp mosses under the shade of the forest. Many of the smaller species stain with spots of crimson, orange, and purple the rocks among the snowfields and glaciers, and gain the summits of peaks more than eighteen thousand feet above the sea, reaching even to the highest rocks in the Alpine chain. For the sake of readers who are not familiar with that wonderful book, "Modern Painters," we will quote some exquisite passages on lichens and mosses, full of beautiful thoughts:-- "We have found beauty in the tree yielding fruit and in the herb yielding seed. How of the herb yielding no seed,--the fruitless, flowerless[17] lichen of the rock? [17] Flowerless in the ordinary, not the botanical sense. "Lichens and mosses (though these last in their luxuriance are deep and rich as herbage, yet both for the most part humblest of the green things that live),--how of these? Meek creatures!--the first mercy of the earth, veiling with trusted softness its dintless rocks, creatures full of pity, covering with strange and tender honour the scarred disgrace of ruin, laying quiet finger on the trembling stones to teach them rest. No words that I know of will say what these mosses are; none are delicate enough, none perfect enough, none rich enough. How is one to tell of the rounded bosses of furred and beaming green; the starred divisions of rubied bloom, fine-filmed, as if the Rock Spirits could spin porphyry as we do grass; the traceries of intricate silver, and fringes of amber, lustrous, arborescent, burnished through every fibre into fitful brightness and glossy traverses of silken change, yet all subdued and pensive, and framed for simplest, sweetest offices of grace? They will not be gathered, like the flowers, for chaplet or love token; but of these the wild bird will make its nest and the wearied child his pillow. "And as the earth's first mercy, so they are its last gift to us. When all other service is vain, from plant and tree the soft mosses and grey lichen take up their watch by the headstone. The woods, the blossoms, the gift-bearing grasses, have done their parts for a time, but these do service for ever. Tree for the builder's yard--flowers for the bride's chamber--corn for the granary--moss for the grave.