FAIRY RINGS. 
237 
poetry, and poetry shedding a sempiternal lustre on the 
acquisitions of truth. Newton dissects the rainbow, and, 
by showing its prismatic structure, disenchants it of its 
angel uses. Franklin analyzes the thunder, and, by point¬ 
ing out its electrical origin, robs it of its avenging voice; 
and in the same manner, the man of science, kneeling on 
the green turf to speculate upon the fairy ring, finds 
that, like other natural appearances which have worn for 
a time poetical and superstitious attributes, this too must 
yield an answer to the touch of that “ leaden talisman/* 
and become a prose fact in the economy of nature. It 
seems at first sight a pity to sweep away a faucy so beau¬ 
tiful; but yet truth—-though only the truth of a fairy 
ring—is superior to fiction; and while the cold inquiry 
of the student of physics clips the wings of the soul on 
the one hand, it enlarges its life on the other, and 
science, by increasing wonder, works in harmony with 
all truth in the extension of the field of poetry. 
To disenchant the fairy rings has cost the philosophers 
considerable trouble. So sagacious an observer as Gil¬ 
bert White never accurately fathomed the beautiful phe¬ 
nomenon; nor did Captain Brown, one of the ablest 
editors of the Selborne letters, who absurdly attributes 
them to electrical agency. The electrical theory of their 
production was a favourite one during the infancy of 
electrical science, when it was the fashion to attribute 
everything of a puzzling character to that subtle agency. 
Sir Walter Scott held the same opinion, and speaks of 
them as the “ electrical rings, which vulgar credulity sup¬ 
poses to be traces of fairy revels/* It is the more strange 
that this opinion should have been cherished, when the 
