68 A PLAIN AND EASY ACCOUNT 



points, so that a breadth is taken up from the inner 

 rank green, through the faded breadth, to the outer 

 ordinary state, the soil of the faded ring is always found 

 drier and of a paler colour than the adjoining parts, 

 and abundantly impregnated with mycelium. Indeed, 

 a careful examination will show that the faded and 

 impoverished condition of the turf of the outer ring is 

 due to the close investment of its roots by the mycelium 

 of the fungi which occupy the ring. The dimensions 

 of the rings vary from three feet to three hundred feet 

 in diameter ; they are at times very irregular in form, 

 an accident arising either from the nature of the soil 

 and the obstacles which they meet with in their circum- 

 ferential expansion, or from more than one ring 

 coalescing, and producing an outline of undulating 

 curves." 



That these fairy-rings were the nightly haunts and 

 dancing-grounds of fairy-folk was a general belief 

 before the existence of these little people came to be 

 doubted. One old author writes, " They had always 

 fine music among themselves, and danced in a moon- 

 shiny night, around, or in a ring, as one may see at 

 this day upon every common in England where mush- 

 rooms grow." Numerous conjectures were ventured 

 as to the origin of these rings when their fairy his- 

 tory was no longer believed in. They were attributed 

 to the exhalations of a fertile subterranean vapour, 

 to the burrowing of moles, to the effects of lightning, 

 and in 1807 Dr. Wollaston ascribed them to the 

 growth of certain species of Agarics, which so entirely 



