430 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
wrinkled, quaking, gelatinous mass of the witches’ 
butter, looking more like a frothy exudation from 
the stump itself than a plant; there a Spathiularia 
protruded from a wide mouth-like gap, like an 
old woman’s tongue, frightening away every 
young rustic, full of the adventures and trans- 
formations of the Seven Champions of Christen- 
dom, from plucking it off, lest the owner, a meta- 
morphosed witch perhaps, should return in proper 
person to demand her unruly member, and inflict 
a proportionate punishment. In the middle of the 
squared top, covered with the minute scurf-like 
germs of unknown plants, are clustered the beauti- 
ful round vermilion balls of the Lycogala, or wolf's 
milk, which, when bruised, exude a dark, grumous 
liquor like clotted blood ; while springing from the 
crevices of the bark, near the ground, the Agaricus 
necator overtops the rest, with its zoned and olive- 
coloured cap and dusky stem, distilling, when 
broken or injured, a blood-like fluid, as though it 
were a sensitive creature, or the sanguine Stereum 
creeps by its side, bleeding when wounded, thus re- 
minding one of Dante’s terrific picture of the living 
Avernus forest, where one feared to break the 
boughs lest they should cry to him from the rents. 
All these, with a score of other curious micro- 
scopic plants, hiding themselves from the super- 
ficial observer, but revealing themselves openly 
