

THE SMALLER FUNGI, 563 
alike, to the old stone-walls and rocky pastures; the leaves of 
the quince bushes in the garden; of the thorn bushes in the 
fields, how strangely distorted by curious forms. The wearied 
looking and dusty lilac bushes, so dusty at the end of summer 
that no rain can wash them clean, nor even will, so long as 
the egg-mould riots on the upper surfaces of their leaves ; the 
crystalline drops of permanent dew glittering in the morn- 
ing sun and which surmount many a tuft of equally crystal 
threads in countless numbers, issuing from some rejectamenta 
_ or waste matter ; these and many, and more beside, often at- 
tract attention as we stroll or walk for exercise or pleasure, 
but are soon forgotten, because nothing is known of them; 
and who is there to tell? Cunningly, wisely, and full of a 
secret, hidden meaning, a thousand forms of the lower vege- 
table life, look up into the faces of pedestrians who, with re- 
Pressed curiosity, and not quite willingly, tread them under 
foot. They are leaves of the great folio, marginal notes on 
the pages of the book of Nature, often and to many, and for 
à long period to every one, hieroglyphs whose deciphering 
_ Would repay all the requisite toil. “How thankful I am to 
_ You,” said a friend, “that you have told me so much about 
; these beautiful, though dry and fragile lichens, which carpet 
the old pastures ; they no longer can taunt me with their pre- 
suming pride, that they are something beyond my acquaint- 
_ mee.” “The best lectures on botany,” said the well-known 
educator, Geo. B. Emerson, once in conversation, “is after a 
Plan persued by a friend, who in the fields discourses on the 
_ ‘Structural differences of whatever plant he meets.” “Differ- 
ent kinds of plants, enough to occupy your life time, are now 
: under my hand,” said Linnaeus, a hundred years ago, as the 
2 tecdote is told. What would the Swedish savant say now, 
=, n on the leaf of the elm alone, more than a dozen spe- 
: Ges of minute fungi are to be found? In a basket of wet 
_ “Sses, lay through the night and part of the next day, a 
= S@ agaric, with a few patches of a white mould attached, 
‘ Which, in that space of time, completely matted by its 
