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HA RD WICKE ' S S CIENCE- G SSI P. 



after a time, a pleasant woman, evidently the 

 keeper, came up. Did she know the forest? Of 

 ■course. Then which was the way to Danby Lodge 

 Beeches? The problem was too much for her, she 

 was too old to have been to a Board School ; there 

 were, she knew, beeches near Coleford ; perhaps 

 I had better go to Coleford and ask there. As that 

 would have been like going from London to Oxford 

 to find the nearest way to Reading, I declined, and 

 went across to the Speech House, asking the few 

 people I met en route, all to no avail ; no one had 

 ever heard of the Beeches, still less seen them. 

 After leaving the Speech House, to which I had 

 often in other years paid visits, I walked six miles, 

 meeting a few intelligent people, but, though they 

 were most anxious to direct me, their capacity was 

 limited. One worthy fellow, a farmer driving along 

 in a cart, suggested that I should go back a mile and 

 a half, and ask the road, if I found any one suffi- 

 ciently well-informed, to a Mrs. Joynt's ; that 

 excellent woman would put me in the way to 

 some one who could tell me. I declined to be 

 sent back, and still walked on, meeting a few lads 

 and lasses, who had 'never heard of the great beeches. 

 At last I came to a big boy, clever and obliging ; he 

 had passed through the Board School and satisfied 

 the inspectors. He knew it was half a mile, or a 

 quarter, or less than a mile at any rate ; you went 

 down there, then over there, and you would come to 

 them ; perhaps the best thing would be to go to the 

 Lodge. I took a fancy to that lad — he was so 

 accurate and clear — and, as a mark of esteem, 

 handed him the small change I had in my pocket, 

 which he received with true John Bull composure. 

 But, in spite of his luminous directions, I did not 

 see my way clear to the Beeches, and to them I did 

 not get, though an hour later I overtook the natura- 

 lists returning from the Big Trees. One might not 

 get to the Beeches, but there were other things to see, 

 and such men as Mr. Vize, the Rev. William Elliott, 

 President of the Woolhope, Dr. Carlyle of Carlisle, 

 a relative of the great Thomas, and Mr. William 

 Phillips, of Shrewsbury, the laborious author of the 

 volume on the " Discomycetes " in the International 

 Scientific Series, are people whom one cannot help 

 learning much from. Mr. Elliott is a particularly 

 fine specimen of the best type of country clergyman, 

 with all the instincts of the scholar and the gentleman, 

 diffusing around him an atmosphere of refinement and 

 culture ; a more polished gentlemen one could not meet 

 with. He has a great reputation as a geologist. Happy 

 the land and the church that boasts of such sons. 



The beauties of the Forest of Dean are too 

 •well known to call for any long description here. 

 The forest is that extensive, wooded tract of hills 

 stretching from Ross to Lydney in one direction, and to 

 Llandogo and Monmouth in another ; not remarkable 

 for large timber, though in places the trees are splendid, 

 there remain many thousand acres covered with wood 



of respectable size. The chief attraction, however, is 

 the wildness and picturesqueness of the whole, and 

 the exquisite bits of scenery which here and there 

 delight the tourist. Among these natural marvels 

 the rocks near Symonds' Yat are famous, and all the 

 way on to Monmouth, along the valley of the Wye, 

 the same charming landscape continues. The forest 

 is essentially a hilly region, inhabited principally by 

 miners and colliers, who still retain features and 

 habits handed down to them from ruder and more 

 primitive times. The district is not easy of access, 

 and the few railways have an execrable service of 

 trains, especially in winter, where on one line there 

 are no afternoon trains at all. 



My knowledge of the fungi lacks completeness and 

 accuracy, but is sufficient to justify me in saying 

 something on the subject. There are at least four 

 thousand species in the United Kingdom, though the 

 majority are microscopic. A definition of a fungus 

 is not easy to frame, and what Dr. M. C. Cooke, of 

 Kew, the author of some of the best and most 

 splendidly illustrated works in the language on the 

 subject, does not attempt, I cannot hope to succeed 

 in accomplishing. Fungi grow almost everywhere — 

 in houses, on wood, in the closed cavities of nuts, in 

 animal tissues, and the Qitcldia inirabilis hixurialis 

 on tar ; in short, fungi grow in and upon everything 

 to which their spores can get access. A blacksmith 

 at Salem threw on one side a piece of iron which 

 he had just taken from the fire ; next morning lie 

 found on this very piece of metal, lying over the 

 water in his trough, a mass of fungi two feet in 

 length ; it had crept from the iron to some wood 

 near, and not from the latter to the iron, and this 

 immense mass had formed in twelve hours. The 

 Rev. ]NL J. Berkeley saw a fungus on a lead cistern 

 at Kew, and Sowerby found a species growing on 

 some cinders un the outside of the dome of St. Paul's, 

 in London. The great Puff Ball has been known 

 to reach the size of a pumpkin in a night ; and 

 Lindley calculated that the cells of which it is made 

 up multiply at the rate of 60,000,000 a minute. Dr. 

 Greville records that a specimen of one of the largest 

 British fungi, the Polyponis sqiiamosiis, reached a 

 diameter of seven feet five inches and weighed thirty- 

 four pounds ; it only took four weeks to reach that 

 size, and grew at the rate of nineteen ounces a day. 

 An individual of this species has been known to reach 

 a diameter of eleven inches in a week. The late 

 Dr. B. W. Carpenter related an instance of the 

 tremendous power which fungi exert in their growth. 

 Basingstoke was, many years ago, paved, and some 

 time later the pavement was found to be uneven ; 

 this unevenness increased until some of the heaviest 

 stones were lifted completely out of their places by 

 the growth of enormous fungi underneath. One of 

 these paving-stones measured twenty-two inches by 

 twenty-one, and weighed eighty-three pounds. Dr. 

 M. C. Cooke had a similar incident brought under his 



