64 TYPES OF BRITISH PLANTS 
The Stinkhorn fungus—a cheerful name—one may . 
occasionally find in damp woods in England, and it is 
worth examination. One can generally track it down 
by the strong smell, which is sometimes perceptible ten 
yards away. The fruit part consists of a thick fleshy 
stalk, thicker than the thumb, and about six inches high, 
with a swelled head. When ripe this head becomes 
slimy, and all the bluebottles in the neighbourhood are 
attracted by the beautiful carrion flavour. They settle 
on the top, and get some of the slime upon themselves. 
Of course there are numbers of spores in the slime, and 
the stinkhorn successfully disposes of its family, with 
the cheerful conviction that in all probability the blue- 
bottle, being filthy in its habits, will leave the young 
emigrants near some other carrion or rotting matter, 
where they will feel themselves quite at home. 
I have left to the end of the chapters on algee and fungi 
the description of what is, perhaps, the most extraordinary 
vegetable group in the world, namely, the Lichens. For 
many years they were a puzzle to 
botanists, in fact, from the time 
when attention began to be paid 
to such lowly forms, but it is only 
in the last thirty years that their 
true nature has been established by 
the researches of a botanist named 
Schwendenberg. To put it quite 
shortly, a lichen is not @ plant at all; it is a family party 
of two quite different plants. The whole group, members 
of which you may see everywhere, encrusting walls, rocks, 
and trees, is composed of permutations and combinations 
of fungi and alge, living and working in alliance. It 
has been found that the aleal members are quite capable 
LICHENS. 
