as it is a tree wliich flourishes very long before decay commences^ our English trunks are not aged enough, 

 in all probability, to afford the Agaric a proper habitat. It is mortifying to be obliged so often to confess 

 that, beyond the comparatively small number of funguses good for human food, we know little or nothing 

 of the qualities of this uuiversally and lavishly distributed family, nor what services each may be appointed 

 to perform in its sphere. 



There is much to be done in Mycologj', by a competent vegetable physiologist, beyond the mere 

 learning to name species correctly, although that is valuable, if truly correct, as far as it goes. In most 

 branches of science a gi-eat improvement has taken place : study was formerly apt to stop with a mere 

 acquisition of names ; but people are beginning to understand the difference between the means to an end 

 and the end itself. " Accomplishments," in the old-fashioned sense, find their proper level, and the power 

 to read a French book, possessed by a person who never opens one, would scarcely be considered worth the 

 tune lost in acquiring such an " accomplishment" as that language. We can remember the time when 

 a young lady who knew the Great Bear from Cassiopeia's Chair, and was sure that Corona Borealis and 

 Aurora BoreaUs were not the same thing, was considered something beyond " accomplished." Cabinets 

 were filled with "music shells" and all sorts of whmisically-named shells, and if their possessors knew each 

 by the dealer's name no one thought of the quondam inhabitants who created those pleasant homes for 

 themselves; they sentimentally fancied the shell sighed for the "sounding shore" again, but would have 

 screamed and run away if it had been presented to them as first tossed upon that shore. Old ladies, who 

 studied and arranged their dragon and egg-shell cliina, would have been startled if hailed as Keramologists ; 

 but their knowledge of cups and saucers was about as valuable as that of the porcelain-like shells possessed 

 by the soi-disant Conchologists. Now a true taste is roused, and shells are studied in a genuine way, as 

 subsidiary to the moUusk which forms them, whether they be immovably fixed to the rock, or borne about 

 on powerful slug shoulders. We might go on; but the night of ignorance glorified is passing away, and 

 the dawn of better things breaks upon us. And when such charming books as the Popular Series on 

 Botany, on Entomologj', Phycology, &c., are to be had, as those our worthy pubhsher (himself the exponent 

 of Conchological science in its true sense) offers to the public, young people, crammed with finisliing 

 lessons, must no longer be allowed to complain, in listless languor, that the country is so dull ! All may 

 choose a pursuit ; all will find a great deal to be finished yet ; pleasant guides are ready to attend them ; 

 and the " Book of Nature," we may hope, will do when Bull's box has been detained with the new novels ! 



