FUNGI. 431 
to a loving scrutiny,—cup-lichens and trailing 
green mosses, and slimy green dust-like con- 
fervee, surrounded perhaps with a border of dock- 
leaves, or a fringe of palmy ferns,—invest the aged 
stump with a nameless charm in the estimation of 
all true lovers of the picturesque. In such a place 
one realizes the vividness of Shelley’s description 
of the garden of ‘the sensitive plant :’ 
‘ And agarics and fungi, with mildew and mould, 
Started like mist from the wet ground cold ; 
Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead 
With a spirit of growth had been animated.’ 
And returning from the woods and the fields to 
the retirement of our own homes, we find that 
there are forms to be seen there as beautiful and 
suggestive of curious thought, as any we have seen 
in the wider field of nature out of doors. If we 
examine under the microscope the green or grey 
covering which spreads over damp walls, or enve- 
lopes a stale piece of bread or fruit in a cupboard, 
or creams over the surface of preserves, what a 
wonderful scene of beauty, a delicate soft world 
of white, an in and out of living lace, suddenly un- 
folds itself like a miracle to our view! Thousands 
of plumy trees and feathery fern-like plants rear 
themselves up in every conceivable attitude, and 
all so tender and transparent that the minute seeds 
are seen lodged in the interior of their stems; 
