162 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



century great chestnut forests have been annihilated by 

 a fungus that was imported it is thought in dry timber 

 from Japan. The host in this case could not resist its 

 unwelcome guest for more than two or three years ; and you 

 saw masses of the finest trees decay into mouldered ruins 

 helplessly, incurably, while the fine dust of the fungus, like 

 fertilising pollen from an autumn yew-tree, floated leagues 

 wide to spread the malady. 



As an English vagrant wanders about the autumn woods 

 he sees signs everywhere of the fungus as disease, but for the 



MUSHROOMS 



most part it produces rather eccentricities than death. It 

 acts curiously, like the galls and flies, which by a sting can 

 make a leaf grow into a ' pin cushion ' on the briar or a round 

 ball on the oak. When the leaves are gone 'the witches 1 

 brooms' stand out in black distinctness, like old magpies' 

 nests, on the birch-trees, and similarly on the beeches. This 

 quaint misshapen growth is often, though not in all cases, due 

 to the strands of a fungus sucking nutriment from the live 

 wood. In spite of all the brilliant colours that they may 

 reach, such as the startling scarlet of the Fly Agaric or the 

 Blusher or indeed the pink gills of the common mushroom, 

 the tribe has, to our eyes perhaps, a colour as unwholesome 

 as the smell. We all associate green with health in a plant, 



