OBSERVATIONS ON VEGETABLES. 425 



and the skirts of coppices. Some truffles, he informed us, lie two 

 feet within the earth, and some quite on the surface ; the latter, he 

 added, have little or no smell, and are not so easily discovered by 

 the dogs as those that lie deeper. Half-a-crown a pound was the 

 price which he asked for this commodity. Truffles never abound 

 in wet winters and springs. They are in season, in different 

 situations, at least nine months in the year. WHITE. 



TREMELLA NOSTOC. 



Though the weather may have been ever so dry and burning yet 

 after two or three wet days this jelly-like substance abounds on the 

 walks. WHITE. 



FAIRY RINGS* 



The cause, occasion, call it what you will, of fairy rings, subsists 

 m the turf, and is conveyable with it : for the turf of my garden- 

 walks, brought from the down above, abounds with those appear- 

 ances, which vary their shape, and shift situation continually, 

 discovering themselves now in circles, now in segments, and 

 sometimes in irregular patches and spots. Wherever they obtain, 

 puff-balls abound ; the seeds of which were doubtless brought in 

 the turf. WHITE. 



* Sevend causes have been assigned for the presence of fairy rings, as they are termed, 

 an appearance occurring in pasture lands cf a dark ring, as if the grass was of more 

 luxuriant and of a darker green. We have sometimes observed the ring incomplete. 

 Wherever we have noticed these, fungi have been present, which afterwards would spring 

 up in the line of the circle, and to their presence we believe the appearance is now 

 generally attributed. The regularity of the dark mark calls attention, but the tracks of 

 the fungi, or the lines in which they will spring, may frequently be observed to run quite 

 irregularly, showing also a dark green mark. 



2 P 



