"TOADSTOOLS" 379 



her web across, and now the button has become a 

 full-grown umbrella, and has scattered the whole 

 grotto with brilliant spores the colour of fresh chloride 

 of gold. The gossamer has become gold-spangled 

 muslin ; the sides of the cavern glow like fire ; it 

 is almost impossible not to talk nonsense about some 

 fairy queen inhabiting there. 



To what end all this magnificence? It is one of 

 the unanswerable questions. It does not appeal to 

 the aesthetic sense of any useful insect. When a 

 fly is wanted to carry the spores about, the stink- 

 horn knows well enough how to get scores of them 

 that is, by a stench of bad eggs and sulphur that 

 fills the wood from one end to the other. But the 

 spores of the stink-horn are borne on the outside 

 of the cap, while the gorgeous russulas and others 

 protect them under the dome. We must fall back 

 on the theory of warning colours, though not with 

 entire confidence. The fly-agaric no doubt effectually 

 calls out, "Thou shalt not eat." There is no 

 ambiguity about its red and no doubt about the 

 reality of its ultimatum. On the other hand, the 

 difference between a poisonous and an innocuous 

 boletus is merely the difference between one " Liberty " 

 tint and another. And many of the most gaudy of 

 woodland fungi are not only nibbled by slugs, but 

 torn up and devoured by squirrels and mice. The 

 most brilliant of all fungus gems is the peziza that 

 we call " moss-cup," which blossoms on dead black 

 sticks in gloomiest and dankest ditches. It is almost 

 as woody and uneatable as the stick on which it 

 blooms, and even if it had the colour and the 

 fragrance of honey, nothing would feel disposed to 



