THE PAGE OF NATURE. 187 



CHAPTER IV. 



FUNGI. 



" Each step we take is over graves 



On which we careless tread ; 

 For ever fresh creative power, 



Glows in the quick and dead ; 

 Not dead, the slime that greens the ditch 



Is quick, a vital force 

 Coheres the stone and rolls the star, 



Along its life-sprung course." 



GOETHE. 



NATURE is a perpetually revolving panorama. No 

 sooner does she withdraw one object from our admiring 

 gaze, than she immediately places another as interesting 

 or as beautiful in its room. In watching the progress of 

 vegetation especially, as month after month it expands 

 before us, we are struck with the regularity with which, 

 each species of plant visits us in its own appointed time. 

 So remarkably constant are the same plants to their 

 appointed seasons, that their appearance might be re- 

 garded as a kind of floral calendar, indicating the various 

 periods of the year. This regularity is not confined to 

 the highest tribes of plants, but is equally observable in 

 the very humblest. The smallest and most obscure 

 tribes have some peculiar functions adapted to each period 



