NOVEMBER. 503 



" green sour ringlets ;" and hence SHAKSPEARE makes 

 a fairy say in his Midsummer Night's Dream- 



" I serve the fairy queen 

 To dew her orbs upon the green." 



as the fresh verdure of these rings was said to be 

 occasioned by the fairies watering them. Titania also 

 observes to Oberon in the same play - 



"Dance in our round, 



And see our moonlight revels." 



It would thus appear that the beauty of the " fairy 

 rings" consisted in their regularity of form and their 

 delicate viridescence amidst the extent of browner 

 pasture. To the observant eye of the Botanist, how- 

 ever, their beauty is greatest when their circumference 

 sparkles in the morning dew with a polished girdle of 

 Agarics, sprung up in the silent night, fresh and 

 spotless as so many new laid eggs ! Various species of 

 Agarics occur on the edges of "fairy rings," though, 

 perhaps, the brown gregarious A. oreades is most 

 common, though making a less regular figure than 

 others. A large Agaric, of savoury smell, which I 

 have chosen to call the " Dryad's Cup" {A. infundibu- 

 liformis, Bull.'), from its assuming the regular shape 

 of a goblet, sometimes filled with crystal dew, often 

 exclusively adorns rings in the vicinity of woods ; 

 while in open pastures the blue-stemmed Agaric (A. 

 personatus), occasionally forms so closely shielded a 

 satiny buff circle of pilei, that a snail might circumslide 

 the ring without any interruption to his course. Con- 

 tinued rain, unfortunately, soon destroys the elegance 

 of these evanescent fungoid orbs for they are not 

 the cause of the permanent circles remaining in the 

 pastures, as these merely offer favourable nidi for the 



