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they continue year after year and increase, but if not, like many in our own 

 meadow, they become broken up and ultimately destroyed. Again, a good 

 dressing of manure over a field in which they occur tends to the breaking up of 

 the rings. That Fairy rings follow the injury to grasses by the attacks of 

 insect larvas and by the death of a disc of grass by rotting material lett on 

 it for a winter we have ample evidence before us, and there is reason to believe 

 that a too heavy dressing of stimulating manure by killing the grass would 

 produce a like result. Salt again by killiug the grasses is known to be succeeded 

 by fungi, which, as we have shown, live upon the decaying elements of the grass 

 roots. It is then just possible that rings may occasionally follow some unex- 

 plained atmospheric cause, as the Dorset poet says : 



Zome 



Do zay do come by lightuuu when do thunder. 



Thi3 is the atmospheric theory. The same author gives the fairy tLeory in the 



following words : 



Zeme do zay sich rings as thick ring there is 

 Do grow in dancfin-lracks of little veiiries, 

 That in the nights o' zumnier and o' spring 

 Do come by moonlight, when noo other veet 

 Do tread the dewy grass but theirs, an* meet 

 An' dance away together in a ring, 

 — Barnes's Poems on Rural Life, in the Dorset Dialect. 



It is a curious fact that the Dorsetshire peasant of our day gives the name of 

 vearie to the stoat and weasel, which suggests the possibility that these 

 quadrupeds might have been observed by them roaming about the sites of 

 fairy-rings in search of larvae, by which the area of the circle is first formed. At 

 all events our labourers believe that their vearies have some connection with the 

 rings. This suggests the probability that the mole tracks observed about fairy- 

 rings by Mr. Lees are caused by these voracious creatures visiting the bare 

 patches made by the Melolontha, and burying beneath the soil in search of them. 

 Our observations, then, lead us to conclude that Fairy-rings are not usually 

 caused by fungi, though these may take possession of a ring formed by other 

 means. Nor do we suppose with Aubrey that the rings are produced by "a 

 fertile subterraneous vapour which comes from a kinde of conical concave." 

 We cannot agree with the mole theory, for the reason that moles do not kill 

 grasses, but, on the contrary, make a field more fertile ; and although our 

 landlord makes us pay a mole-rate for the destruction of these creatures on his 

 estate, we have never seen any sign of one on our farm, and if we had a choice 

 in the matter, such is our love of these creatures and such our conviction of 

 the good they do, that we had rather pay a rate for their preservation. Were 

 they preserved on our farm we think it impossible that we should meet with over 

 800 surface grubs in three rows of roots, and equally impossible would it be to 

 meet with bald rounded patches in our meadows from which to extract over 30 

 fat larvce of the Cockchaffer in the space of a square foot. 



We think then that the primary cause of fairy rings is the destruction of 

 circular patches of grass and not the construction of rings, in the first instance 



