514 WILD FLOWERS OF 



who may have sprung up suddenly into notice from 

 obscurity, or who from some hiatus in their genealo- 

 gical scroll, may be unable to prove positively their 

 descent from Noah ! But this simile, in fact, hardly 

 applies more to the mushroom than to any other 

 annual plant. The sporule of the mushroom germi- 

 nates, it is true, hidden from view ; and though called 

 a flowerless plant, it would be more correct to consider 

 the pileus that elevates itself above the grass as all 

 /lower, the real stem being subterraneous, and this 

 pileus, if not accidentally crushed, often endures much 

 longer than the flowers of the garden, whose fugaceous 

 petals wither and die in an hour or a day. In support 

 of this view some species of agarics have from ten to 

 fifty pilei or "blossoms" rising from a single stem. 

 If we proposed a simile at all, we might rather con- 

 sider the agaric as symbolizing the fate of modest 

 merit, having every energy rife for action, yet oppres- 

 sed and obscured by unfavourable circumstances ; but 

 the moment the concurrent opportunities coalesce, the 

 irrepressible effort of genius presents itself, sudden, 

 indeed, and unexpected as the meteoric plants we 

 have been considering, that stud the fields and woods, 

 unable to display their forms till the saturated atmos- 

 phere and reeking pasture gives that impulse to their 

 latent powers, which the Great Former of all intended 

 from the beginning. 



If the " fungous fruits of earth," as COWPER calls 

 them, are not so poetically exciting in themselves as 

 the pencilled corollas of the higher tribes of vegeta- 

 tion, yet the search after them leads to scenes which 

 have their peculiar charms, and where the mind can 

 revel in its own imaginings surrounded by the sancti- 



