POLYPOREI 227 



full of beauty, in its wavy fan-like form and flowing 

 lines and flutings presenting a suggestive decora- 

 tive theme, whether in the branches of 

 '** . painting, sculpture, or the plastic arts. 

 attributes The pores upon its sulphurous surface 

 are so minute as to be scarcely visi- 

 ble, but they shed a copious quantity of whitish 

 spores. The pileus of the dried specimen is often 

 more or less frosted with minute white crystals — 

 binoxalate of potash — and the spore surface dulls 

 to the color of buckskin. 



Another remarkable feature about this fungus, if 

 report be true, is its visibility by night, not merely 

 from its pale yellow hue, but by an act- 

 Luminous ual flood of bluish luminous phospho- 

 by night rescent light, the environment of its 

 haunt in the woods sometimes being 

 lighted up by the effulgence from its ample mass of 

 growth, a resource not uncommon among the fungi, 

 and popularly known under the name of "foxfire." 

 This phenomenon is frequently observable in woods 

 at night, following rainy weather. An old stump 

 or prostrate log will appear streaked with lines of 

 brilliant light. If we approach and detach the loos- 

 ened bark, its back and the decayed surface of the 

 log thus exposed will prove ablaze in phosphores- 

 cence, whose presence had scarcely been suspected 

 but for the chance fissures which revealed the tell- 

 tale streaks. I recall from my boyhood experience 

 one such midnight episode as this in which, from 

 the peculiar outline of the fallen trunk and the coin- 

 cident circumstance of two approximate dots of brill- 



