AMONGST THE GRASS. 61 
with respect to the display of His power ; but, as the study of the 
crust of the earth would never enlighten us with regard to 
spiritual truth, so no amount of biblical study will ever teach us 
Geology or Astronomy. 
Hy. Untyerr. 
Amongst the Grass. 
HEN Mr. H. ©. Watson produced his invaluable work, 
“‘Qybele Britannica,” he found it so difficult to procure 
positive information of the flora of some districts that, under the 
head of Bellis perennis, he enumerated several counties in which 
he had no evidence that even the common Daisy was to be 
found. If this was the case with flowering plants we must expect 
it to be even worse with such obscure organisms as fungi, indeed, 
in half the counties of Britain we do not know that the common 
mushroom or the corn-mildew is to be found. Buckinghamshire 
is one of the counties concerning the inferior flora of which we 
know almost nothing, and in the hopes of adding to our knowledge, 
I am about to give a short account of one small group of fungi, 
in the hope that it may lead some stray reader to hunt for them, 
identify them, and record how many belong to this county. 
Amongst the grass in autumn the close observer of nature will 
not have overlooked some little white or yellow bodies, growing 
either singly or in tufts, and only conspicuous from the clearness 
of their white, or the brightness of their yellow colour. Com- 
monly only from one to two inches in height and not thicker than 
a crow-quill, it may be expected that hundreds of people, even in 
Bucks, have walked over them, or sat down upon them, many a 
time and oft, and never noticed them. These belong to a genus 
of Fungi bearing the name of Clavaria, from the club-shape of 
many of its members ; and as we have upwards of thirty British 
species, it behoves us to write of them in some kind of order, and 
for that purpose, those which are more or less clavate or simple, 
shall occupy the first place. Indeed it is doubtful whether space 
will permit us on this occasion to enumerate the branched species 
at all. 
