2S 
THE IjAUCIEK Ft'iVGT 
Australian Species, and bis account appears in Hooker's Journal of Botany for 
April, 1842. When shown to the natives, he said that “the poor creatures cried 
out ‘Cliinga,’ their name for a spirit, and seemed much afraid of it.” 
The nature of the process in our agaric does not seem to have been in- 
vestigated. Tlie luminescence in other cases lias been found to be due to a 
ferment luciferase acting on a compound protein luciferin. In the firefly, the 
tight is per cent, efficient, that is, the energy liberated is almost entirely 
converted into light, leaving only 0.5 per cent, to be accounted for by conversion 
into heat and other forms of energy. 
Figure 1. — Pleurotus hi mints Berk. (No. 89). Adelaide. Photographed hy Its 
own light. Twenty-four hours’ exposure with superspeed film. 
FAIRY RING'S. 
Fairy rings arc well-known in most parts of the world, and much romance 
has grown up around them, tn South Australia two species of fungi at least — 
an edible mushroom and a puffball — manifest this feature, though often the ring 
is rather indistinct or broken. The large, rather coarse Horse Mushroom 
( Psolliola arvensis Schaeff,), with gilts at first whitish and finally purplish 
hrorvn, but never rich pink at any stage, often grows in large rings. In autumn 
the large caps appear arranged more or less in a circle, which geometrical 
figure can be readily seen at a distance, as the photograph (Figure 2) shows. 
After the crop of mushrooms is over, the site of the ring can often be recognised 
still by tlie ground being either bare, or with shorter grass than inside or out- 
side tlie ring, and it is this hare ring that is the fairy ring of mythology. Tn 
Europe, the growth of the grass just outside and also within the ring is often 
more luxuriant than elsewhere, but this feature has uot yet been noted in 
Australia. In the bare ring the soil is permeated with the mycelial threads of 
the fungus, and in these threads the food substances are stored up, which will 
later be made use of for the rapid growth of the mushrooms themselves. Now, 
materials (such as particles of soil or pieces of rotting wood), permeated with 
mycelium, will be found to be usually drier than similar adjacent material not 
so infiltrated. A lump of such permeated soil or wood placed iu water will not 
as readily take up the water and become damp as similar lumps of the un- 
pcrineated material. A piece of rotten mycelial-infiitrated wood also will not 
burn so readily as an ordinary piece, and this is to be explained by much of 
the available empty space in the wood, the various tubes, etc., being plugged 
up with mycelium, so that air, with its content of oxygen, is uot available for 
combustion in the interstices of the wood, and so the burning is confined merely 
to a peripheral portion where oxygen is obtained from the surrounding air. From 
these statements we may infer two factors that contribute to the formation of 
