FUNGUS-HUNTING IN SPRING. 
127 
FUNGUS-HUNTING IN SPRING. 
BY W. B. GROVE, B.A. 
Away to tlie woods ! Away ! The Spring is come. The 
longest, dreariest Winter of our time is gone; abiit, evasit, 
erupit, and, as our Warwickshire folk express it, “Joy go 
with him;” though why Joy should be expected to go with 
a guest whose departure is welcome I confess I never could 
understand. I would prefer she stay, and truly while fungi 
abound so thickly as they do, and eyes and microscope hold 
out to view them, there is little doubt she will. 
It seems but a fortnight since we wandered disconsolate 
by icebound brooks and dreary hedgerows, and now on this 
brilliant day in early April the sun is shining in an almost 
cloudless sky, and the wind is scarcely chill. The hawthorns 
are leaping into leaf, the horse-chestnuts are bursting their 
huge buds, the catkins are hanging from the hazel, the 
flower-buds of the elm have decked each twig with two 
geometrical rows of rich brown globes. 
In our sad brumal climate it is remarkable how speedy a 
change clear skies and the sun’s unfettered rays work in us. 
Our blood courses quicker in our veins. Old and staid as we 
are, we vault the stiles and fences with a lively glee. But 
stay ; as we place our hands for this purpose on a pole which 
forms the upper rail of a fence our eyes are attracted by a 
myriad black round tiny specks bursting through the bark 
which had not been removed from the rail. Behold a fungus. 
“ Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,” thou 
unknown farming man, unwitting benefactor of thy kind, 
whose hand hath placed this pole to rot and grow rich in 
saprophytic life. A blessing in corduroy art thou to the 
mycologist; for the sticks thou plantest in the earth to make 
thy sham hedges, the chips and cuttings thou lea vest in the 
woods and ditches, the stumps and logs thou lettest decay in 
winter instead of burning them to warm thy shivering limbs 
—all these are his happy hunting grounds, and of the smaller 
fungi yield him richest treasures. 
Glancing again at the pole, our first thought is to 
determine the species of tree to which it belongs. This gives 
us pause. The pole is straight, about 8ft. long, and Sin. 
thick at the lower end ; the bark is smooth, shining, and 
greyish, here and there brownish-white. It cannot be 
birch, for it is not white enough ; nor beech, for it is too 
shining. The wood is not the pure white of the holly. The 
