288 FOOTNOTES FROM 



wheel-like heads; in another, the corky leaves of a Thele- 

 phora closely pressed to the wood, with shell-like patterns, 

 and colours as beautifully and dimly shaded on its surface 

 as in a misty rainbow ; here the soft, viscid, flesh-like 

 knobs of the Tremella sarcoides, resembling tiny teats, 

 or the wrinkled, quaking, gelatinous mass of the witches' 

 butter, looking more like a frothy exudation from the 

 stump itself than a plant ; there a Spathularia pro- 

 truded from a wide mouth-like gap, like an old woman's 

 tongue, frightening away every young rustic, full of the 

 adventures and transformations of the seven champions 

 of Christendom, from plucking it off, lest the owner, a 

 metamorphosed witch perhaps, should return in proper 

 person to demand her unruly member, and inflict a pro- 

 portionate punishment ; in the middle of the squared top, 

 covered with the minute scurf-like germs of unknown 

 plants, are clustered the beautiful round vermilion balls of 

 the Lycogala, or wolf's milk, which, when bruised, exude 

 a dark, grumous liquor like clotted blood; while spring- 

 ing from the crevices of the bark, near the ground, the 

 Agaricus necator overtops the rest, with its zoned and 

 olive -coloured cap and dusky stem, distilling, when broken 

 or injured, a blood-like fluid, as though it were a sensi- 

 tive creature, thus reminding one of Dante's terrific pic- 

 ture of the living forest in the infernal regions. All 

 these, with a score of other curious microscopic plants, 

 hiding themselves from the superficial observer, but re- 

 vealing themselves openly to a close and minute scrutiny, 

 cup-lichens and trailing green mosses, and slimy green 

 dustlike confervse, surrounded perhaps with a border of 

 dock- leaves, or a fringe of palmy ferns, invest the aged 



