ISO 
NATURE NOTES. 
Though we may find various species of fungi all through the 
summer, they are especially characteristic of autumn, and no one 
who has allowed indifference or prejudice to blind his eyes can 
have any notion of the variety and beauty of the forms they 
assume: some are purely white, and like branching coral; others 
have their branches an intense orange yellow ; others again have 
their disks as strong a scarlet as a guardsman’s tunic ; while the 
great majority are of more subdued colour and of every possible 
tint of yellow, russet, purple, and brown to black. Far more of 
these than is at all generally realized have edible value, and tons of 
despised “ toadstools ” that would supply wholesome food, perish 
unregarded each recurring autumn. The white coral-like Clavaria, 
for instance, that we have referred to is not “ a thing of beauty ” 
alone, but is, when stewed with a little ham and parsley, and 
seasoned with a touch of pepper and salt, as dainty a dish as need 
be set before the most exacting of gourmands. Fungi vary in form 
and size as much as in colour, and may be looked for in almost 
every possible position — some nestling among the long grass and 
dying bracken, some standing boldly erect on the open ground, 
others springing from decayed wood and fallen timber, and others 
again on lofty tree trunks. Almost all quickly perish and lose 
their beauty after gathering, and though there is no more charm- 
ing ornament in a country house than a large plateau laden with 
various kinds embedded in moss, the charm is a very short- 
lived one. 
October, again, is the time when the changing tints of autumn 
foliage are in perfection. The strength of colour in a beech 
wood is something entirely beyond representation or descrip- 
tion ; no pigments in the artist’s box can reach the intensity 
of its orange in the sunlight, no descriptive epithet convey 
any idea of its wonderful beauty. The autumn tints of many 
trees are suggestive of decay and a falling away from their sum- 
mer charm, but the beech, instead of fading tamely out, is 
even more beautiful in October than when clothed in its robe of 
summer verdure. The variation of tint in the woodlands is 
very great ; each tree, each shrub, each plant has its own colour. 
The maple will be found a mass of tawny yellow, the black bryony 
a trail of bronzed purple, the herb Robert a clump of crimson. 
We do not of course imply that no two different plants we can 
find are of the same tint, nor that each plant always has its own 
livery. The maple does not vary to purple any more than the 
ripening wheat does, and anyone who has noticed the matter 
carefully could name all the trees and bushes in a hedgerow half 
a mile away by their differences of autumnal tint. While the 
nuts and blackberries have been mostly sought out, the hedges 
of October are laden with other fruit- — the rich hips of the wild 
roses, the clustering berries of the hawthorn, the dark purple 
bunches of elderberries, the long festoons of the hop and of the 
red-berried bryony, the fruits of the guelder rose, holly, privet, 
the dogwood and many others, and even when the frost and the 
