234 



ON A DRAGON FLY. 



Haeckel, Spencer, Darwin, Sir John Lnhbock, Grant Allen, and 

 others try to show us by means of Biology, that every animal has been 

 slowly moulded through a wonderful series of metamorphoses into its 

 existing shape by surrounding conditions, and that each bears in its 

 parts or form the traces, when we can read them, of its development 

 or evolution, and that mankind, step by step, sums up into himself. 

 more or less, along an endless line of ancestors, all the antecedent life of 

 a small trifle of eons of old times. 



We may ask ourselves what kind of life has each race of man for 

 the most part summed up into itself, and how much of the Dragon, for 

 instance, has evolved or devolved for each of us. The manners, habits, 

 and customs of a race, it has been suggested, are the key to this 

 specialisation, and that running through the forms of lower life 

 preserved to us we see the vestiges of all the earlier stages and changes. 



If you then will throw your fancy into the scene among the Dragon- 

 flies you may not he mistaken in finding many of the phases of wife 

 capture after the old order of things brought down to our own days, as 

 M'Lennan describes them. 



Happily, with us, sweethearting has evolved from might into 

 manners, from capture into courtesy, as Coventry Patmore depicts 

 in the "Angel in the House": — 



" Lo ! how the woman once was woo'd — 

 Forth leapt the savage from his lair 



And felled her ! And to nuptials rude 

 He dragged her, bleeding, by the hair. 



From that to Chloe's dainty wiles 

 And Portia's dignified consent — 



What distance ! But these Pagan styles, 



How far below Time's fair intent. 

 « * * * » 



Shall love where last I left him halt ? 



Nay ; none can fancy or foresee 

 To how strange bliss may time exalt 



This nursling of civility." 



FUNGI OF THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF BIRMINGHAM. 



FIRST LIST, 1881-82. 

 (Continued from page 185.) 



AG AHlCmi— continued. 



Ag. (Amanita) vaginatus. Bull. Water Orton ; Sutton Park ; Warley 



Woods. Sept. 



Ag. (Clitocybe) flaccidus. Sow. Sutton Park. Sept. 



Ag. (Pleurotus) ulmarius. Bull. Sutton Park. Sept. 



Ag. (Mycena) alcalinus, Fr. Sutton Park; Water Orton. Sept. 



Ag. (Mycena) sanguinolentus, A. and S. Hams Hall. Sept. 



Ag. (Pholiota) squarrosus, Miill. Driffold Lane, Sutton. Sept. 



Ag. (Flammula) gummosus, Lasch. Driffold Lane, Sutton. Oct. 



Ag. (Galera) hypnorum, Batsch. Sutton Park; Warley. Sept. 



