59 
and I need not now enlarge upon the subject. Yet it is astonishing how few 
mycologists fully understand the matter from want of attentive observation. 
Only a few weeks since a learned physician, at a meeting of the Royal Horticultural 
Society, made some remarks upon the nitrogenous nature of “ the Agarics that 
formed fairy rings.” It is cerainly a mistake to suppose that rings of considerable 
ble size, appearing suddenly, as they often do—which is the only pretence for the 
ancient legend of fairies dancing—could be formed in a single night from the 
deposition of sporules from a single central agaric, besides which, entirely perfect 
circles are rarely to be met with, the so-called rings being mostly ares or irregular 
waving lines. But whatever the modus operandi, whenever Agarics have colon- 
ized the exterior line of a fairy ring, they remain there as long as they can, and by 
their spreading mycelia enlarge it. This is particularly the case with Marasmius 
Oreades, and in a lesser degree with Tricholoma gambosus ; but the other inhabi- 
tants of rings are more or Iess fugitive. A crowd of Tricholoma grammopodius 
or Clitocybe geotrupus may appear in a ring one year, and the next the ring will be 
entirely unoccupied, and not a single agaric be seen there. The Marasmius 
Oreades, indeed, often lingers for years, forming a colony and making a wide 
brown space, not always, as is generally supposed, keeping to a circular form $ 
but as individual life, both animal and vegetable, must have a termination, so at 
last even the Oreades finds sufficient nutriment wanting and dies out. But though 
the mycelium of ring agarics, whether the Marasmius or others, certainly dies 
out after a time, what, it may be asked, becomes of the spores? These must be 
very numerous, and one might think, would suffice to cover the field; but they 
fail to do so, and, like winged seeds, they must fly off somewhere—no doubt to 
colonise other rings. 
T have at the present time no general theory to propose on the duration or 
spread of agaric life, for the remarks that I now make are only to be considered 
as pegs on which to hang the sketches of some curious or remarkable funguses 
that I have found at different times, and which have only once or twice come 
under my notice. Possibly more diligent or persevering fungus-hunters may have 
gathered them oftener in searching divers places, but, of course, I can only refer 
to my own experience; and it certainly is a matter for wonder that a single fungus, 
or perhaps a group of a remarkable species, should appear to view at a particular 
spot and never be met with at that place again. This must be within the expe- 
rience of all practical mycologists, and I can only suppose that a peculiar nutri- 
ment that gave growth to the fungus was exhausted, and the spores of the fungus 
once observed flew off to find that nutriment elsewhere. Where fungi appear 
upon the dung of animals I think it may be well presumed that in some way or 
other the sphores of such fungi must have been taken into the stomachs of the 
animals, and after deposition on the ground have soon after vegetated, the im- 
pulse being given them accordingly. I once gathered a moderate-sized yellow 
Peziza on some sheep’s droppings in a cave on the Malvern Hills, and I after- 
ward found on the same species of Peziza upon sheep’s dung in Switzerland, 
but I never found it again on the Malvern Hills. A question may thus arise 
