The Scottish Naturalist. 205 



Britain, " witnessed whole hundredweights of rich wholesome food 

 rotting under trees ; woods teeming with food and not one hand 

 to gather it; and this, perhaps, in the midst of potato-blight, 

 poverty, and all manner of privations, and public prayers against 

 imminent famine." On the Continent, fungi afford not merely 

 a flavouring for a delicate dish or a pleasant sauce or pickle, but 

 the staple food of thousands of the people. Indeed, for several 

 months in the year, especially in Poland and Russia, they con- 

 stitute not only the staple, but the sole food of the peasantry ; and 

 from this circumstance they are called by enthusiastic writers 

 " the manna of the poor." To many who are not reduced by 

 necessity to use them as food they form a valuable source of 

 income when collected for the market. 



But it is not for their uses in human economy that the various 

 humble plants which fall under the cognisance of the Cryptogamic 

 Society are chiefly valued. They have in themselves a deep 

 source of interest in the great variety of their forms, in the 

 remarkable peculiarities of their structure, and in the physiological 

 problems with which they are connected. The study of them is 

 well calculated to exercise an important educational influence. 

 While they try the patience, they exercise the faculties by forcing 

 attention upon details. The beauty of very many of them is also 

 a great attraction. What lovely effects they produce in nature ; 

 mosses and lichens imparting their varied hues, and their soft 

 cushions, and round rosettes to the woodland nook, and the ivied 

 ruin, and the crumbling wall, in picturesque beauty ; and green 

 confervse floating in springs, in fleecy clouds in ponds, or in long 

 graceful wreaths in streamlets, like the hair of the naiads bathing 

 in the clear waters, seen by those who have the gift of imagina- 

 tion, and believe in the powers of fern-seed to make the invisible 

 apparent. And often how lovely in themselves are these lowly 

 objects ! Nothing can be more beautiful than mosses as a tribe, 

 with their intricate tracery and translucent foliage. How beauti- 

 ful are the snow-white coral tufts of the Stereocaulons and the 

 Cladonias ; how graceful the scarlet-tipped goblets of the cup- 

 jnosses ; how bright the primrose-coloured maps of the geo- 

 graphical lichen mottled with black on the alpine rocks ; how 

 gorgeous are the broad scarlet caps that crown the pure-white 

 .stems of the fly agaric in our birch woods when the sun is shin- 

 ing down upon them through the faded foliage ! There is not 



