58 
ON THE OCCASIONAL APPEARANCE OF RARE 
FUNGI, AND THEIR NON-PERSISTENCE, 
BY EDWIN LEEKS, F.L.8., F.G.S., 
President of the Malvern Naturalists’ Field Club. 
Linnzus, who had the happy art of arranging the forms both of animal 
and vegetable life in a systematic as well as an agreeable way, so as to attract the 
fancy as well as assist the memory, gave the name of Nomades, or Wanderers, 
to the tribe of Fungi, from the observed fact that their various families and 
species are like gipsies, for ever wandering about from one region to another, and 
seldom or ever certainly be found in succeeding years at the same place. 
This is generally true with respect to the Agarics and Boleti, as well as the 
members of several other genera, that appear and disappear so irregularly as to 
baffle any theory that may attempt to account for it. Indeed, like comets that 
suddenly appear in our system never to present themselves to our view again, so, 
many funguses may be noticed one year in a particular spot, and though diligent 
search may be made, they will never be found in that locality again. 
But with all funguses the idea of perpetual wandering about will not hold 
good, as the Polypores, for instance, when once attached to a tree remain there 
for life, or until the tree becomes a total wreck. A willow may often be seen 
loaded with Polyporus igniarius, which preys upon its juices; and the ash 
in like manner is often annoyed with a still weightier load in Polyporus fraxineus, 
or studded with the black charcoal-like balls of Hypoxylon concentricum. All 
decaying wood, too, invites the insidious fungoid parasites, that like vultures 
delight in carrion, though in their case of a vegetable nature, but they do not filly 
off like vultures, but remain while there is any nutriment left for them to subsist 
upon. Thus a fallan trunk in autumn will be seen covered with the black glue-like 
Bulgaria inquinans, or old decaying elder-trees are hung with the curious-shaped 
“ Jews’ Hars” Herneola Auricula Jude), while the Polyporus versicolor is common 
enough on stumps in woods, and is as permanent as the stumps themselves. 
Other examples may be given in the ‘‘ Roast-beef” Fungus (istulina hepatica ), 
the corky Xylaria hypoxylon, and the Dedalewa quircina, not to mention the 
minuter families of Spheriacee attached to old wood and other substances. 
But some of the Agarics, also, encamp upon the ground for a considerable 
time, especially those that establish themselves within the circumferential limits 
of afairy ring. And here I must remark, that though several species of Agarics 
take possession of a ring, they do not themselves form it in the first instance. 
This, no doubt, the members of the Woolhope Club are well aware of from my 
former observations on fairy rings, and my paper printed in their transactions, 
