240 FUNGI. 



were in a fever for seeing. Some were so thoroughly 

 carried away by the profusion of beauty around them, 

 that they forgot that they were seeing ; but the generality 

 were bending every energy to follow in the steps of other 

 men, seeing what had been described, and doing what 

 others had done Ladies recognized the Oak and Beech- 

 ferns from the top of the coach ; others exclaimed upon 

 the shamrock, the grass of Parnassus, and the Devil's-bit 

 Scabious empurpling the meadows ; sprigs of the Bog- 

 myrtle were gathered and passed from hand to hand, and 

 many a weather-stained hat and bonnet was garnished 

 with the Ling or the belated garlands of the Woodbine. 

 Some even noticed the broad patches of lungs of the oak 

 which half covered the bole of many a tree in the 

 Trossachs, and other passes, and the copper coloured 

 circles on the rocks in Lord Breadalbane deer-park 

 attracted attention from a few. Birds, beasts, and in- 

 sects ; rocks, streams, and mountains ; highland cottages, 

 and the bare-leowd children swarming from them, all 

 received their full meed of observation. The beautiful, 

 the curious, the useful, all were noted — all, but with one 

 exception. 



There is one group of flowerless plants to which our 

 race is notoriously unjust. Show to a man of taste and 

 poetry the tall column and spreading coital of the Fly 

 Agaric, its cap covered with glossy crimson, flecked with 

 torn fragments of its white felt swaddling clothes, " It s 

 only a nasty toadstool/' he says. Men will acknowledge 

 beauty in the tiniest moss, the most formless lichen, or 

 even in coarse sea-wreck, and then peep into your basket 

 of Fungi, varied in form, and of every brilliant hue, and 



