The Homes and Habits of Fungi 



" And agarics and fungi, with mildew and mould, 

 Started like mist from the wet ground cold ; 

 Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead 

 With a spirit of growth had been animated." 



SHELLEY: " The Sensitive Plant." 



To many people the only growths known as fungi are toad- 

 Itools and mushrooms. They give the name mushrooms to the 

 species known to them as edible, and regard all other similar 

 growths as toadstools, things uncanny or poisonous. 



" The grisly todestool grown there mought I see, 

 And loathed paddocks [toads] lording on the same." 



SPENSER'S "Faerie Queene." 



This distinction has no scientific basis, and in fact most of 

 the species called toadstools are edible. Fungi are not always 

 the grewsome things of Shelley and Spenser. In their ranks are 

 many which delight the eye with their colouring and the sym- 

 metry of their forms. They are the grotesques of nature; nests, 

 hoofs, cups, umbrellas, shells, and clubs are represented, together 

 with spheres, hemispheres, cones, and many other geomet- 

 rical figures. The mildew on the linen, the mould on food, 

 the rusts and smuts which blight our fields of grain, and the dry 

 rot which crumbles our lumber to dust and which causes old 

 wood in dark places to glow with a weird, pale, flickering light, 

 are all forms of one group or another of these plants which prey 

 upon living or dead organic matter. In ordinary observation, 

 only the simpler and more noticeable fungi are taken into account, 

 but they are in reality met with in almost every situation imagin- 

 able. They are found in damp cellars and in rooms shut off 

 from the light ; in fact, some form of fungus will be found in 

 every place and on everything which is not exposed to a circula- 

 tion of fresh air. 



In woods and open fields the attractive forms are found. In 

 shady woods the beautiful white "bear's head " hangs on stately 

 tree trunks, and the "destroying angels" gleam white in the 

 shadows on the ground. Shelving brackets, green or red or 

 brown, encircle old stumps, or stand out stiff and white from 

 the crumbling trunks of fallen moss-grown monarchs of the 

 forest, while wood-brown toadstools huddle in groups among 



