THE FAIRY RINGS. 155 



Another poet says— 



" O'er the dewy green, 

 By the glow-worm's light, 

 Dance the elves of night, 

 Unheard, unseen. 



Yet where their midnight pranks have been, 

 The circled turf will betray to morrow." 



Nor was the superstition unknown to Shakspeare ; was there any- 

 thing unknown to Mm ? Listen : — 



" And nightly meadow-fairies, look you sing, 

 Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring ; 

 The expressure that it bears, green let it be. 

 More fertile-fresh than all the field to see ; 

 And, Honi soit qui mal y pens^j write 

 In emerald tufts, flowers, purple, blue, and white ; 

 Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery. 

 Buckled below fair knighthood's bending knee I 

 Fairies use flowers for their charactery." 



And if we know better now-a-days than to believe these green 

 circles to be fairy rings, we also know better than to give the 

 slightest credence to certain authors of our own day who have 

 gravely asserted that they are caused by electricity. We prefer 

 the fairy agency theory, as the more poetical and picturesque of the 

 two, for, as to the truth of either, why, the one is every whit as 

 true as the other. Fairy rings, as we continue for convenience 

 sake to call them, are, in truth, caused by a species of mushroom 

 (Agarieits praiensis), the sporule dust or seed of which, having 

 fallen on a spot suitable for its growth, instantly germinates, and 

 constantly propagating itself by sending out a net-work of in- 

 numerable filaments and threads, forms the rich green rings so 

 common everywhere this season. On the outer edge of this ring, 

 and sometimes also, though more rarely, on the inner edge, grows 

 the perfect plant, the fruit, the mushroom proper itself ; and if 

 some of our modern wiseacres had only had half an eye in their 



