A few, already awned, stood above their fellows, waving like palms-meadowgrass, fescue, foxtail, brome-grass--each slender stalk crowned with a tuft.

Others were budding, only half unfolded, amid the darker mass of spongy moss which gave them sustenance.

Amid the numberless shafts thus raised toward heaven a thousand paths crisscrossed, each full of obstacles-chips of bark, juniper-berries, beech-nuts, tangled roots, hills raised by burrowing insects, ravines formed by the draining off of the rains.

Ants and beetles bustled along them, pressing up hill and down to some mysterious goal.

Above them a cunning red spider was tying a blade of grass to an orchid leaf, the pillars it had chosen for its future web; and when the wind shook the leaves and the sun pierced through to this spot, I saw the delicate roof already mapped out.
I do not know how long my contemplation lasted.