FUNGI. 429 
some lonely haunt of a shady ancestral wood, where 
the soil, enriched by the organic contributions of 
centuries, is bursting into life through every crevice 
and on every inch. Such a stump, as Wordsworth 
beautifully says of the mountain, is ‘familiar with 
forgotten years.’ It is long since the tall massive 
oak which it supported has been removed by the 
axe, leaving a gap which the encroaching trees 
around strive in vain to conceal ; and nature has 
kindly smoothed away the traces of man’s harsh 
treatment, and brought it back to perish on its 
own bosom. Every sunbeam and rain-drop that 
descended upon it, while crumbling it more, 
increased its picturesqueness, and while depriving 
it of its own life, helped to develop upon it other 
forms of life lower in the scale, until now, it not 
only adds to the air of antique mystery which 
pervades the scene, but peoples it with all the 
fantastic tenantry of Shakespeare’s fairy land. In 
one corner may be observed a cluster of elegant 
pearl-like mushrooms, wee elfin-looking things 
with long, black stalks, and white wheel-like 
heads; in another, the corky leaves of a Thele- 
phora closely pressed to the wood, with shell- 
like patterns, and colours as beautifully and 
dimly shaded on its surface as in a misty rain- 
bow ; here the soft, viscid, flesh-like knobs of the 
‘Tremella sarcoides, resembling tiny teats,—or the 
