LEAF FUNGI. id 
But look at the leaf fungi as useful from the interest they giv 
point you will say common to a certain extent with all other 
scientific pursuits. You need not go a walk at any season of the 
year when there will not be within a few yards of your door, if you 
live in the country, some leaves that you may put in your pocket- 
book or botanical case to examine when you get home. Here is 
a decided advantage in having an out-of-door pursuit when accom- 
panied by scientific investigations. You get at once an object in 
your exercise in the fresh air. There is a definite thing to be done, 
and with it the powers of the mind are called into exercise, and 
the identical walk which to him who cares for none of the various 
“‘ologies” is stale and torpid, becomes to him who follows science 
from the love of it, a healthy, invigorating, and very often highly 
spiritual exercise. The body gets healthy exercise and the mind is 
actively employed. There is another useful thing obtained by 
these and kindred sciences. ‘They encourage a feeling of brother- 
hood amongst spirits of the same type. The clans of labour, of 
trade, of the professions, of the titled aristocracy are broken; the 
distances between man and man are shortened. You are willing 
to receive me, I am willing to receive you without much more in- 
troduction, whatever our grade in life, than that we both of us like 
to investigate God’s work in the humble but none the less beautiful 
forms of cryptogamic botany ; we both feel that there is a common 
union between us made perhaps in a leaf fungus or whatever else we 
may both of us like to examine. A few more words, and I must 
stop. Leaf fungi are not only interesting in the point to which 
reference has been made; we believe they are of vital chemzcal im- 
portance. When are our nostrils more keenly alive to decomposing 
vegetable matter than when we have against the laws of nature put 
our leaves to rot in a way whereby they cannot be attacked by 
fungi. Get your fresh laurel leaves, put them into water for a few 
days, and the smell will be pestilential; but let them fall on the 
ground and decay in their usual manner. What happens? You 
get the Zrochila lauro-cerast (Fr) Spheria ceuthosporoides (Berk) 
Diplodia tecta (B. and Br.) D. consors (B. and Br.) you may find 
Ceuthospora lauri (Grev) and Stemonitis arcyrioides (Somm) all 
hastening to rescue the air from the seeds of illness, and all finding 
in the dying and dead leaf just that exact spot where it can brighten 
out its existence the period appointed for it, and where in smallness 
of size, it can vie with the oak of the forest as regards the splendour 
of its proportions, minute though they are, ramifying its mycelium 
through the decaying parts of the leaf, and so turning to good 
use those very chemical properties essential to it which otherwise 
would be so deadly to us and ours. To sum up, we say leaf fungi 
are useful as aids in the chemical destruction of gases very injuri- 
ous to us ; they are useful and interesting in promoting friendships ; 
