MUSHROOMS 



THE least summer-like, if not the most autumnal of all the 

 things that grow, is the strange tribe of mushrooms. About 

 them all hangs a very odour of decay, though in fact the 

 mushroom is a fresh growth of strange vigour. The savour 

 of the charnel-house, consummating the alleged melancholy 

 of autumn, is common to almost every fungus that grows, 

 but the fungus itself rather kills than dies. It is powerful 

 enough to raise great stones, and the activity of the white and 

 stringy strands that serve for roots is not less great than in 

 any spring plant. Some of the mushrooms and toadstools 

 have a peculiar beauty. Artists, especially children's artists, 

 have revelled in the hooded shape, and about a thousand 

 toadstoals gnomes and fairies have danced at night. What 

 a compelling picture is that of the caterpillar smoking his 

 hookah on the mushroom over whose edge the little Alice 

 strains to peep. But the most delicate of all the tribe are 

 seldom found in picture or prose. 



The place for the toadstools is the wood in a wet district. 

 Stools of utter fragility shoot pagoda-like from all the decay- 

 ing sticks, which they devour and disintegrate. Their peaked 

 heads are streaked with the deepest sepia, like the darker 

 feathers of the woodcock, or sometimes with the most 

 brilliant crimson. The tribe is yet more prevalent than the 



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