38 MYCOPHAGY. 



stool," he goes on to observe, " which makes them seats 

 or thrones for toads, does not quite satisfy me, I confess, 

 though there be doughty authorities for it in Johnson's 

 Dictionary, and in Spencer's ' Faery Queen' ! 



' The grisly todestool grown there 'mought I see, 

 And loathed paddocks lording on the same ; ' 



and though an anonymous Italian authority declares 

 that in Germany they have actually been seen sitting 

 on their stools, still even in Germany it must be ad- 

 mitted that they do not use them as frequently as we 

 might expect, had they been created for this end/' * 



As to the plants comprehended under the general 

 term Fungus, it is not easy to give a strict definition 

 comprehending every individual genus and species of 

 the whole group a difficulty the origin of which is 

 apparent when it is remembered that it is often ex- 

 tremely difficult to distinguish a plant from an animal, 

 and that the fungus family is not only very prolific, but 

 almost cosmopolitan in its diffusion. Merely catalogued 

 and described, there are sufficient to fill an octavo 

 volume of nearly four hundred pages of close print of 

 British species alone. Declining, therefore, anything 

 like such strict definition, we shall indicate a few of the 



* Apropos of toads, here is something that astonished us the 

 other day. Taking home a little toad for the purpose of trying 

 whether, when come to years, he could manage to live a few years 

 without food, according to popular belief, we found him covered 

 with loose scales, apparently of silver. Unfortunately our visions 

 of fortune from a silver-bearing toad were dissipated by the speedy 

 death of toadie while we were benevolently considering how to 

 feed him. The scales are in our possession, however a singular 

 memorial of the defunct. Can this be the foundation of Shake- 

 speare's 



" Uses of adversity, 



Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, 

 Wears yet a precious jewel on his head"? 



Last summer, in the museum at Elgin, we found a toad, said 

 to have been exhumed from solid rock, covered with similar me- 

 tallic scales. What are they? 



