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Mr. Edwin Lees said that he would supplement the admirable paper 

 just read by Dr. Bull with a few remarks. The season, unfortunately, had net 

 permitted them to partake of a dish of those luxuries so highly commended 

 by his zealous friend, but he had no doubt that at a succeeding summer or 

 autmnnal meeting he would take care that they should have snch an ample 

 supply as to be fully able to judge for themselves as to the taste of the indicated 

 dainties, and rejoice that they had the opportunity of doing so. Dr. Bull 

 had only cursorily touched upon the appearance of Fairy Rings, which was a 

 curious matter iu itself, for although numerous theories had been proposed upon 

 the subject, no one had hitherto published any elucidation as to their cause that 

 could be fully relied on. They were all familiar with those circles in meadows 

 and pastures, popularly called "Fairy Rings," and he wished particularly to 

 call the attention of the members of the Woolhope Club to them, as the 

 investigation would be of advantage to them in the savoury diet they would 

 thus obtain ; for Agarics of several species, at one time or other occupied the 

 outer line of these rings. They had been alluded to by Shakspeare, who had 

 expressed not only the popular opinion of the times in which he lived respecting 

 them, but had thus briefly given the result of his own observation : — 



" The nimble elves 

 That do by moonshine green sour ringlets make. 

 Whereof the ewe bites not ; whose pastime 'tis 

 To make the midnight mushrooms." 



This showed close observation in the immortal bard, though Sir "William Guise, 

 the President of the Cotteswold Club, in a letter to him (Mr. Lees) on the 

 subject of Faii-y Rings, had denied what Shakspeare had said, and asserted that 

 he had seen sheep feeding in the area of the rings. This might be true as to the 

 uncontaminated area of the rings, but the poet's remark had reference to the 

 " sour ringlets," or edge of the circle, in which the fairies were supposed to have 

 danced, and where the "midnight mushrooms" sprung up. A few years 

 since, when in the vicinity of Stratford-on-Avon, where Shakspeare lived, he 

 had an opportunity of verifying the observation of the "Warwickshire bard. 

 In his way to dine wdth a friend at Welford, the path from Stratford led him 

 through a neglected meadow where there were a considerable number of Fairy 

 Rings, several of them then containing a quantity of the delicately-flavoured 

 species named Agaricas Gambosus, of which he gathered a siipply to enrich his 

 friend's dinner-table, though the cook at first strongly demurred to using them ; 

 but the party when the Agarics were served up all pronowcced them as most 

 excellent in flavour. In the meadows mentioned were a flock of sheep, and it 

 was most curious to remark, that though the meadow was pretty closely nibbled 

 all over, there was an exception in the outer circle of the rings, all of which 

 were occiipied by a dense growth of the coarse grass, called by naturalist 3 

 Sracht/podivm pinnatiim, and which the sheep in their grazing had left 

 altogether untouched. Here, then, Shakspeare, tested on his own ground, was 

 found true to nature. In fact the Brachypodium pinnatum is a rough grass, 



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