270 FUNGI. 



part was olive, and covered with downy hairs. The 

 plants trembled on the stem as I carried them; but I 

 got them home in safety. The largest measured one and 

 a half inch across. I have also found it in Herefordshire. 

 Xo fungus answers so unsatisfactorily to its description, 

 or looks so unlike itself in different stages, as the Jew's 

 ear (Hirneola auricula judae, Plate XXIII., fig. 18). 

 Berkeley describes it as concave, and others speak of it 

 as cup-shaped. We first saw it in Wiltshire, adorning a 

 leafless elder-bush in the early winter. The plants re- 

 minded us of large ears ; as long, and thrice as broad, as 

 those of a full sized lop-eared tame rabbit. The likeness 

 to ears was perfect ; there were the veins, the thin grizly 

 texture and a soft velvety surface like mouse-skin. The 

 colour varied from red to green, in beautifully blend- 

 ing shades. The following spring we found the same 

 plant on budding elder ; it was thick, smooth, semi- 

 transparent, and only velvety underneath ; the veins 

 were there, but it seemed impossible that the substance 

 should ever be rolled out to the extent and thinness of 

 our friends of last year. It is one of these young speci- 

 mens that are figured in the plate. Comparing my 

 specimens, I concluded that I had thus procured typical 

 representations of the two extremes of Jew's ear life; but 

 last year I found a perfect forest of it upon an elder 

 hedge near Eoss, in Herefordshire ; and, lo, specimens 

 were there of every age, and in every state of preserva- 

 tion. Infant gelatinous plants were there, rising one 

 above another ; full-grown ones, still shelf-like, not 

 cupped, not pendulous ; old shrivelled ones were there, 

 very little like ears ; some blackened with age, some 



