The extraordiuary manner in which the seeds of phaenogamous plants lie dormant till some accident 

 favours their germination has often been commented upon ; the sudden and rapid development also of 

 plants which have been long stunted by cii-cumstances unfavourable to their attaining a flourishing and 

 blooming existence, and which left them in fact mere rudiments, just capable of being called into renewed 

 life by the removal of these obstacles to their vigorous expansion, must have struck every observer of 

 nature. "When underwood is cut down, how the primroses enjoy the unwonted sunbeams which light up 

 the nooks among old mossy stmnps, where they nestle sheltered from the north-east treachery of March ! 

 then the most elegant of all hyacinthine flowers, the common blue-bells, attain twice their usual dimensions, 

 without losing an atom of bending grace, and replace, by a sheet of blue, the dank grasses and uncomely 

 weeds and briars which formerly smothered them, encouraged in such tyrannous usurpation by the entangled 

 dripping branches above. For a year or two beauty has the sway, and wild strawberries ripen ; then the 

 hydra-heads begin to reassert their rights, and alder, and hazel, and ash-rods stand vigorously up, while the 

 briar again catches our feet between the bushes ; — our rambles are over for a while, but there is less reason 

 for regret since the pretty objects of them have shrunk away, and will lie in sad seclusion, almost dormant, 

 till the woodman's axe comes, on the happy anniversary that shall give back life, liberty, and their turn of 

 enjoyment to blue-beUs and wild strawberries, anemones and primroses. The fungus tribes are frequently 

 called into existence in the same hasty profusion as the flowering plants, evoked from the obscurity in 

 which they have been lying, by those potent magicians, light, air, and rain. 



A few years ago, towards the close of summer, in rambling through a tract of 'woodland which had 

 been cut the previous season, a very peculiar and really beautiful spectacle presented itself ; never was 

 wood so gay before, not with flowers, for their season was over, but — soften the supercilious smile, good 

 reader — with Agarics ; Agai-ics all alike, all developed apparently pretty nearly on the same day, all rooting 

 in the low stumps, in dense fascicles, bending forwards and downwards, their gracefully curved stems 

 decked with rich pileuses of ta^'ny, crimson, and gold. Agariciis pomposiis indeed ! rightly did Bolton so 

 entitle it; for in colours it was gorgeous, and in profusion most wonderful; such glory had not made 

 those sloping glades gay for fom-teen years, and might not again for fourteen more, as we suppose ; for the 

 next two seasons, certainly, no display of the kind took place, and after that the copse was again im- 

 penetrable. This Agaric, however, was not our more humble subject given to-day, but its large, highly- 

 coloured brother, A. lateritlus {A.pomposus of Bolton) described in our first series. 



