23 
LEWIS D. VON SCI1 WE IN IT Z. 
too apparent to the senses; lie too much upon the 
surface; there is nothing of the spirit of adventure; 
nothing of the Giant of the Brocken to be encountered. 
But, set before her a turf studded with mosses—a 
clump of twenty different sea-weeds, a bundle of a hun¬ 
dred strange ferns, a basket of innumerable new fungous 
parasites; or, in defect of any thing more exquisite, a 
load of nameless sedges and grasses, and there is at once 
a banquet for her keen appetite to revel on,—a truly 
u dignus vindice nodus/' 
And who shall venture to accuse this far-reaching 
and deep-searching propensity of the northern botanists? 
Certainly not one who has never entered beyond the 
outer gate of this chosen sanctuary of nature. 
It is probable that even the greater number of pro¬ 
fessed botanists are little attentive to the wide extension 
given by nature to the cryptogamicraces. Fungi, as well 
as the other classes in this great division of her works, 
are spread over almost every sort of vegetable matter, 
whether in the dead or the living state. They are to 
be met with in wells, mines and caverns, as well as in 
the garden, the field, and the farm yard ; on decayed 
branches, stumps and roots of trees ; on the bark, be¬ 
neath the epidermis, and amidst the inner coats of grow¬ 
ing timber ; on the petioles and nerves of dry leaves; 
on the ground, amidst dense forests—lawns, marshes 
and meadows. One* inhabits only the decaying hoofs 
of horses and horns of oxen, w hile another)' is no where 
* Onygcna equina. t Onygcna corvina. 
