NOVEMBEE. 507 



often dot the leaves of plants with orange and brown 

 spots in a very pretty manner, and with a lens put on 

 the appearance of a multitude of minute cheese cakes ! 

 The ^Ecidium of the common Dock, which is pure 

 white, is peculiarly elegant, and furnishes an instance 

 of the extreme beauty often perceptible in the very 

 minutest objects. The genus Tricliia contains several 

 curious species, all found growing upon rotten wood. 

 The yellow-seeded Trichia (T. dirysosperma, Dec.}, 

 may be often found in coppices during the autumn, 

 occupying the interstices of decaying stumps, with its 

 clustered yellow peridii, which resemble the small 

 cocoons of insects. These bursting display masses of 

 gold-coloured wool, enclosing the numerous minute 

 sporidice. Persons residing in the country, with 

 leisure at their command, need never want employ- 

 ment in examining the smaller tribes of fungi at this 

 season of the year, nor need they go far to find them- 

 every copse, hedge, and broken stick, teeming with 

 them, especially the diversified and numerous tribe of 

 the Spliceritf, which are nearly all attached to bark in 

 a rotten state, or decorticated wood, in this respect 

 differing from the Lichens, which are confined mostly 

 to living bark. No less than 201 species of Bpliceria 

 are enumerated in HOOKEE'S British Flora; one of 

 the largest and most obvious being the round black 

 S. concentrica, so often seen upon dying or dead Ash 

 trees. Almost every plant, not to say nearly every 

 leaf, indeed, nourishes some kind of epiphytical fun- 

 gus, such as the Puccinia or TTredo, conspicuous as a 

 red or yellow eruption upon the upper or under sides 

 of leaves, and they are so numerous and common that 

 it has been suggested by some botanists that their 



