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adorned with varied, delicately-shaded hues, and with 

 exquisitely carved veils, ' fringes, and gills ; that of 

 another presents the most beautifully sculptured ivory 

 pores and sinuosities, or richly-coloured tubes or spikes. 

 One species looks like a ruby cup ; another is embossed 

 with stars ; while the leaves and the grasses of the woods 

 and fields often form niduses for some of the loveliest and 

 strangest forms, which our great Creator has scattered 

 over the earth with lavish hand to delight the intelligent 

 and observant eye. There is not in nature a more pic- 

 turesque object to the painter, or a more interesting study 

 to the botanist, than the old decaying stump of a tree in 

 some lonely unvisited haunt of a shady ancestral wood, 

 where the soil, enriched by the organic contributions of 

 centuries, is bursting into life through every crevice and 

 in every inch. Such a stump, as Wordsworth beautifully 

 says of the mountain, is " familiar with forgotten years." 

 It is long since the tall massive oak which it supported has 

 been removed by the axe, leaving a gap which the encroach- 

 ing trees around strive in vain to conceal ; and nature 

 has kindly smoothed away the traces of man's harsh treat- 

 ment, and brought it back to perish on its own bosom. 

 Every sunbeam and rain-drop that descended upon it, 

 while crumbling it more, increased its picturesqueness, 

 and while depriving it of its o/vvn life, helped to develop 

 upon it other forms of life lower in the scale, until now, 

 it not only adds to the air of antique mystery which 

 pervades the scene, but peoples it with all the fantastic 

 tenantry of Shakspere's fairy land. In one corner may be 

 observed a cluster of elegant pearl-like mushrooms, wee 

 elfin-looking things with long, black stalks, and white 



