FAIRY RINGS. 125 



lapis fung if er or volcanic tufa, if actively employed, loses, 

 in about three or four years, its power of production, 

 which is only reacquired by a repose of several seasons. 

 To this peculiarity is now ascribed the production of what 

 are, in Europe, called Fairy Rings. These curious de- 

 nuded circles, amidst the vivid green of an English com- 

 mon, were once attributed to the tiny feet of fairies, who 

 were supposed to make the spots, so marked, their place of 

 revelry. Subsequently they were thought to be the effect 

 of electrical action. Now they are known to be produced 

 by the eccentric growth of various kinds of fungi, and 

 might, therefore, be properly termed the vegetable ring- 

 worms of the fields; or rather the ring-plants of the com- 

 mons. Commencing, as do the ringworms, at a spot, these 

 fungi move progressively outwards, leaving a bare unve- 

 getating space behind them, upon which neither fungi nor 

 grass will grow for a time. Finally, the grass returns, 

 and filling up the centre, follows the protophytes, so as to 

 produce a broad circular belt of scorched earth, which 

 grows more and more in diameter. The fungi, evolved 

 only on the outer edge of the belt, do not again attack the 

 centre, in which the soil appears to have lost its power of 

 sustaining them. 



Most persons attribute this fact to the probable exhaus- 

 tion from the soil of some special element necessary to the 

 growth of these fungi. That this view is erroneous, may 

 be inferred from the observed decay of the fungi on the 

 spot where they grow, by which the elements of their com- 

 position are restored to the soil at once.* Besides, if such 

 elements were removed and not thus restored, it is not easy 



* The ploughing in of crops of clover is one of the best expedients for 

 the enrichment of the soil. Land is impoverished only by removing its 

 products. 



11* 



