FUNGI. 241 



merely exclaim with disgust, " What a lot of toadstools ! " 

 Fungi are only accounted fit to be kicked over, hands 

 are considered too good for them. " Is it a mushroom ?" 

 asks a boy, whose gastronomic justice is fully aroused, 

 but when you answer "No," he forthwith upsets the 

 "horrid toadstool." 



Surely the time has come for the poor Fungi to get a 

 fair hearing. As if knowing our tastes for strong contrasts 

 in colour, and variety in form, they combine themselves 

 in groups of endless variation in tint and contour. Out 

 of the grass on the banks of those highland roads sprang 

 black tongues, contrasting strangely with the soft sur- 

 rounding moss, the passers-by praised the moss, but left the 

 weird tongues unnoticed. It was the same with the yellow 

 and violet coral-like branches clustering under shelter of 

 the ling — these belonged to the fungi, so no one had eyes 

 for them. Standing in their accustomed mushroom form, 

 covered with scarlet, brown, or violet, ©r still more often 

 orange, the tourists could praise trees, and rocks, and 

 flowers, and even the mosses and the fallen leaves, but 

 not one word for the gorgeous congregation of fungi ! 



O o go o 



Yet the fungi are marvellous in structure, attractive to 

 the instructed eye from their grace of form and brilliancy 

 of colour, but still more from the hidden marvels of their 

 formation revealed by the microscope. They come, along 

 with the mosses, when the fields and woods have lost all 

 other attraction, and they give interest to the late autumn 

 and early spring ramble, not withdrawing their graceful 

 presence even during winter, if the frost spare their deli- 

 cate structure. 



Fungi, like other plants, have three parts, and these, 



Q 



