266 THE RING OF NATURE 



chiffon. On the floor, a curled beech leaf rests 

 lightly on its keel. We know how brightly the 

 autumn beech leaf shines. It seems to have an 

 inner light of its own, a brilliance to which no other 

 leaf attains. But this leaf in the fairy's grotto 

 shines three times as brilliantly as that, because of 

 the myriad grains of glowing chloride of gold 

 that have been sprinkled upon it. 



Even when night comes we may not lose all the 

 beauty of the fungi, but may discover a new beauty 

 even greater than that of day. The luminous 

 agarics belong entirely to other countries, Greece, 

 Brazil, and the lands of the fire-fly. But in our 

 woods a stump of dead tree will sometimes deceive 

 us with a belief that we have found a glow-worm, 

 and sometimes a whole log has been found of such 

 luminosity that it was easy to tell the time by any 

 part of it, the whole log appearing like a pillar 

 of fire. 



Nothing astonishes us more or is so typically 

 associated with the fungus as the rapidity with 

 which it grows. The plant that sends up almost 

 in a day a fully organized blossom prepared for 

 the visits of insects and the setting of seed is found 

 on inspection to have first equipped itself with 

 very solid stores to which the flower bears the 

 proper proportion of product to producer. But 

 if we uproot the giant puff-ball that has sprung up 

 in the field in a single night we find nothing of 

 the kind to account for it. The globe of white 

 flesh bigger than a football is gathered to a point 



