378 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



edible, the others being compounded of baleful fire 

 and stomachic torment A safer experiment in 

 mycophagy is to climb an oak and fetch down 

 thence a fungus that looks like a pound or two of 

 beef steak, for it is indeed a beef-steak fungus that 

 juts out there like a rolled ox-tongue a link be- 

 tween vegetarianism and a carnivorous diet. Indeed, 

 vegetable gravies most beefy in flavour are sometimes 

 of fungoid origin. Again those pearl-grey half-moons 

 jutting out in a big cluster from a decaying stump 

 are oyster mushrooms if only we could be perfectly 

 certain of them and one of the most delectable of 

 all mushroom dishes. 



A beech tree that has been dead some years, and 

 still stretches its branches but not its twigs far up 

 towards the still sky, is begemmed from top to 

 bottom with shiny, slimy, white fungi, with here and 

 there a blue-grey boss as a link between them and 

 the dead grey bark. A hornbeam has been rent 

 as though with an explosion where the mycelium 

 insisted on coming through, and it has built there 

 a pile of blossom that looks like a dish of nearly 

 two dozen very large and very appetising penny 

 buns. The golden-brown caps are glazed in the 

 pastry-cook's best manner with sticky sugar through 

 which you seem to see the gleam of saffron and other 

 tasty contents. A water-dripping bank that seemed 

 to be covered with huge dead leaves turns out to be 

 covered with sad-brown fungi, the edges of the caps 

 turned upward, twisted and curled like the wasted 

 leaves of butter-bur or colt's-foot. But look into the 

 hollow branch where once a little owl nested. While 

 a red fungus unfolded its button there, a spider spun 



