215 



This notion of Aubrey's, however, brings me to the third division of my 

 paper, as to the TJieories adduced by philosophers and natirralists to account for 

 the appearance and continuance of the rings bo common.in pastme land. 



Dr. Darwin, the botanical "poet of the last century, was of opinion that 

 ekctricity gave the formjto the fairy ring, and in a note to his poem of "The 

 Botanic Garden," contends that "flashes of lightning attracted by the moister 

 part of grassy plains, are the actual cause of fairy rings,'' and in the poem itself, 

 he says : — 



" So from the clouds the playful lightning wings, 

 EiTes the firm oak, or prints the Fairy Kings." 



But if so, these rings would be evident to some eye or other immediately after 

 a thunder storm, and the blackenedj grass would be an incontrovertible wit- 

 ness ; but there is no reliable evidence thatj I know of as to lightning making 

 such oiicular marks on grass lands, while trees and prominent objects ai-e 

 generally the subjects of electric strokes. Jlr. J. F. Dovaston, at a later period, 

 in Loudon's Magazine of Natural History, like Darwin, ascribed the exciting 

 cause of the formation of rings to " strokes of electricity," which laying bare the 

 ring the first year, by "the fertilization of combustion," gave rise .the second 

 year to a crop of grass "with -highly increased vigour and verdure." This 

 fertilization, however, Dovaston remarks, though violent, is of very short 

 duration, and thus the circles soon disappear. It may be well to remark that 

 both Aubrey, Darwin, and Dovaston, aU believed the rings to he forvied of their 

 full size at once, and by a sudden act, without which, indeed, the idea of dances 

 in the moonlight, made evident when the sun rose, would have been un- 

 sustainable. 



But as Agarics often fill the outer margin of a Fairy Ring, a question 

 arose as to how they came to be there, and this has led to the supposition 

 that the Fungi were the efficient cause and origin themselves of the circles in 

 the grass. This was first suggested by Dr. Wollaston, and has been since 

 admitted as a vera causa by the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, Dr. Greyille, Mr. Cooke, 

 and almost aU British Fungologists. It is therefore necessary to examine it in 

 detail, and see if this theory really agrees with careful observation, 



Mr. M. C. Cooke, adopting the explanation of Dr. Wollaston and Mr. 

 Berkeley, thus expresses himself in an article on Fairy Kings in Hardwicke's 

 Science Gossip* :—" Theic are green circles of luiiuiant grass on pasture lands, 

 sometimes of immense size, and to be seen from a considerable distance, 

 Romance ascribes their origin to the dances of fairies by moonlight; science 

 to a much more matter-of-fact cause. These circles are the result of Fungi, 

 originating at' first from a single mushroom. This parent mushroom exhausts 

 the soil beneath it, and nearly destroys the grass by the spawn or mycelium 

 which insinuates itself among their roots. "When matured, the spores of this 

 mushroom are shed at an equal distance all around the plant, which latter dies, 

 decays, and manui-os the soil around it. The next season a circle of Fungi spring 

 up about the spot occupied by the mushroom of the preceding year, but aU 



