344 FLOWERLESS PLANTS. 
upon the gentlest breeze, were it even so slight as to leave 
the gossamer unmoved. Let us not, however, look alto- 
gether upon the dark and dismal side of the picture. They 
all may be, nay, are, beneficent forms of life, only less 
poisonous and otherwise injurious than would be the fleeting 
noxious vapors they catch from the atmosphere, as their 
kindred do the filth of the mighty deep, and hold it back 
from its fiendish mission of misery to mankind. They 
come mostly in the melancholy autumn days when the flow- 
ers are fading away, and the leaves are falling to decay, 
when the beautiful fairies have fled from the grassy lawns ; 
when no naiads dance in glee down the glittering wavelets 
to the boundless ocean; for then. even the brook itself 
loathes and leaves its slimy bed, which, with the aid of 
crypts, reptiles and creeping things, can scarce suffice to 
stay or temper the impending plague. Like a grizzly beast 
of prey, it walks in thick darkness, or sits at bey in the sun- 
sucked fogs; or, perchance, winds its slow length invisibly 
along, like a spirit serpent in the stagnant air of the vales 
and deep mountain gorges; or coils its envenomed form in 
the dismal cellars and filthy by-ways of our cities. It is 
notorious that in stagnant water, or in that other fluid, the 
air— where decomposing organisms take on innumerable 
forms of life—there is the purified and purest portion of 
the pond. Even the noisome mosquitoes, dragon flies and 
reptiles, with flowerless plants, render fluids salubrious that 
were hastening to putrefaction and death. 
That like assimilates to like in the realms of spirit and of 
matter is a universal law that will be seen, and, sooner or 
later acknowledged. From the vegetable kingdom many 
examples might be drawn in illustration, and, perhaps, few 
will be more strikingly in point than the Fly Agaric ( Agar- 
dcus muscarius), so named from its being used to poison flies. 
This intoxicating fungus is often seen in hilly or subalpine 
regions, particularly in our forests of fir and birch, where 
its tall, trim, white stem, and rich scarlet cap, studded with 
