FUNGI. 333 
to the dreary regions of Greenland and Lapland, 
supplying the natives with their tinder, and with 
an excellent styptic for stopping blood and allay- 
ing pain; and they announce to the hapless exiles 
of Siberia, when their gaily-coloured forms spring 
forth from the crevices of the rocks, and in the 
dark haunts of the gloomy fir-woods, that the 
stormy blasts of winter and spring are past, and | 
that the summer and autumn, those short, sweet - 
seasons of indescribable beauty and pleasure, have 
come. 
Certain genera and species occur only in tropical 
and sub-tropical regions, having their northern 
limit in the north of Africa or the coast of the 
Mediterranean. Several genera and species are 
confined to New Zealand, others to Ceylon and 
Java, others to the Cape de Verde Islands and the 
United States. Like flowering plants, the fungi 
of different climates and zones are found at differ- 
ent heights along the sides of tropical mountains 
that rise above the snow-line. In the Sikkim 
Himalayas, Polyporus sanguineus and xanthopus 
luxuriate in the stifling tropical woods at the 
base of the hills; higher up the fungi peculiar 
to Ceylon and Java grow among the palms and 
tree-ferns of the mid regions; higher still, the 
species of southern Europe abound in the deodar 
forests and among the rhododendron thickets of 
