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selves before our view, some being of extraordinary dimensions; as well as the 
brick red elevated pilei of Boletus scaber. The ground in fir groves is often made 
vividly beautiful with the golden yellow of Boletus elegans, or the gamboge tint of 
B. flavus, besides the purple hues that several scattered Agarics present to the 
wondering eye with branching coral-like tufts of Clavaric. In and about the 
pleasant paths of groves when the autumnal breeze raises melancholy music 
among the dying foliage, the tops of Agaricus emeticus appear like purple fruit 
lying upon the ground, while A. vescus and A. heterophyllus, also enliven the 
woody scene, and several of the tall Agaricus procerus present a very curious 
aspect. The pink or carmine pileus of Ag. rutilans that affects to grow on stumps, 
is another attractive Agaric, and how rich A. cinnamomeus and A. sanguincus 
appear on their mossy beds. So the moist breath of autumn calls up new forms 
of vegetable morphism which might not otherwise have appeared, thus giving 
splendid colours to the products of damp and decay. 
A Fairy Ring, if well stored with agarics in close connection with each 
other, is as pretty an object among moist autumnal pastures as can well be seen, 
and besides awakens all sorts of ideas—poetical, superstitious, and theoretical. 
Certainly fields are made greener from the decay of agarics growing in rings, as 
Shakspeare intimates, alluding to the popular idea that fairies in their circling 
dances made the rings :— 
The expression that it bears, green let it be, 
More fertile fresh than all the field to see. 
So another author has observed, as if really believing in fairy pastime :— 
‘¢ Where the small people dance the moonlight is the clearest, the dew is the most 
lustrous, and the pasture is the greenest after.” This any observant eye may have 
noticed, but the effect is really due to the decay of funguses thus manuring the 
soil. Mushrooms and puffballs, too, where numerous, if not tempting in colour, 
are conspicuous on the green turf by their immaculate whiteness. 
While the fading groves, in the decline of autumn, rise before the eye in 
colorific glory, the cryptogamic botanist in his pleasant wanderings sees the 
ground coloured with the bright hues of Agarics and Boleti that spring up daily, 
in rapid succession, as if vieing with the tinted leaves; for some of the larger 
Pezizas, as P. aurantiaca and P. onotica, prevent fascinating patches of colour that 
even attract observers ignorant of their names and nature. Pcziza coccinea pre- 
sents a cup of the deepest carmine, that often attracts the most incurious, and the 
adornment of stumps in woodland places by species of the genera Tvrichia and 
Arcyria, that show when the Peridia bursts the beautiful pink or brown wool that 
invests the interior, is charming when the floral world exhibits only withered 
stalks. 
The Clavaric, too, like tufts of branching coloured corals, are not to be 
forgotten, while the flabby brown Jews’ ears (Auricule Jude) are strung on the 
branches of old elder trees curiously, if not invitingly together. If the weather be 
wet, other forms suddenly appear so obvious to rural observers, that they name 
the jelly-like masses of Tremellina ‘Witches’ Butter,” and concoct with them an 
ointment which witches once used. 
