320 FAIRY RINGS. 



that where lightning falls so powerfully as to calcine turf, some effect 

 will be perceptible on the substrata of soil, or gravel, &c. for even 

 quartz, has been vitrified by lightning ; but that no similar effect in 

 any degree is to be discovered under fairy-rings, either recent or old, 

 has been ascertained by accurate examination. 



Instead of troubling you with any further observations of my own, 

 in refutation of the above theory, permit me to close with a quota- 

 tion from the accurate botanical work of the late Dr. Withering ; in 

 which, after describing the agaricus orcades, the author explains the 

 phenomenon of fairy-rings in a more satisfactory manner than has 

 been done by any other writer. 



" I am satisfied that the rare and brown, or highly-clothed and 

 verdant circles, in pasture fields, called fairy-rings, are caused by 

 the growth of this agaric. We have many of them in Edgbaston 

 Park, on the side of a field sloping to the south-west, of various 

 sizes ; but the largest, which is eighteen feet in diameter, and about 

 as many inches broad in the periphery, where the agarics grow, has 

 existed for some years on the slope of an adjoining pasture-field, 

 facing the south. The soil is there on a gravelly bottom. The 

 larger circles are seldom complete. The large one just now de- 

 scribed, is more than a semi-circle, but this phenomenon is not 

 strictly limited to a circular figure. Where the ring is brown and 

 aUnost bare, upon digging up the soil, to the depth of about two 

 inches, the spawn of the fungus will be found of a greyish white 

 colour ; but where the grass has again grown green and rank, I 

 never found any of the spawn existing. A similar mode of growth 

 takes place in some of the crustaceous lichens, particularly in the 

 L. centrifugus, which spreads from a center to the circumference, 

 and gradually decays in the middle ; an observation made by Lin- 

 neus, and which is equally applicable to the general tendency of 

 growth in the agaricus orcades." 



{Monthly Mag. vol. xv. Editor. 



