What method may be followed with the mosses and Liverworts to gain instruction, as well as amusement, and convert a woodland visit to some better purpose than a mere idle stroll? What is applicable to the one is also to the other. Mosses should be collected when in fruit, that is, when they exhibit their capsules. In this condition they should be taken from the ground or trees, and each wrapped in thin paper by itself. The locality to be written outside in pencil, with the date. Arrived at home, all mould or extraneous matters should be removed, the specimens laid out flat between sheets of paper, and pressed by a heavy weight until dry. When dried they may be kept in envelopes, to be studied or named at any time. After years of rest, these specimens will not appear to differ from what they did on the day of their collection, except a slight fading of the bright green colour. Not only will they prove souvenirs of many a pleasant ramble, but if the localities and dates are attached, they will always afford interest to bryological friends, or they will furnish material for fireside study and intellectual amusement during the evenings of winter.

CHAPTER VI.

FUNGI AND LICHENS.

ANY visitor of our woodlands in September and October will at once recognise a peculiar kind of vegetation not observable in spring and summer. This peculiarity consists in the large number of fungi with which the ground is sprinkled in all directions. Some people believe that fungi only make their appearance in autumn, because it is only then that they obtrude themselves upon the eye, by reason of the profusion in which they are produced. It is, nevertheless, a fact that the class of vegetables known as fungi are being developed all the year round, the larger and more conspicuous kinds being in a great measure autumnal. No one can pass through a moist wood in October without being impressed with the profusion and variety of what are commonly called "toadstools," growing upon the ground or on old stumps of trees. It is only the student of these obscure plants who really knows the immense variety which our woods produce; the hundreds of species which make their appearance, flourish for a few weeks, and then disappear, leaving behind scarcely a visible trace of their visitation. No plants depend so much on the character of the season as these; moisture, combined

with a certain amount of warmth, is indispensable. In seasons wholly favourable their profusion is astonishing, and the artist will find ample work in portraying the diversities of form, and delicate gradations of colour which these organisms assume. In the majority of cases, indeed in all, with a few rare exceptions, the species which are found in woods may be sought in vain elsewhere. It is also a noteworthy fact that some kinds are found growing only in proximity to certain species of trees. Fir woods have fungi belonging to certain particular species; beech woods will produce other and distinct species, and oak woods others again different, whilst a few species will probably be common to all. It has been a popular notion that all fungi have the form of the common mushroom slightly modified, or rather that those only are fungi which have an upright stem surmounted by a cap, as in the Parasol Mushroom, of which our figure illustrates a young specimen. This is a very great mistake, as great as that of a country gentleman who gravely informed us on one occasion that there might probably be six kinds of fungi, but he did not believe there were more; there were the mushroom, the champillion (for champignon), the toadstool, the puff-ball, and the hard things which grow upon trees; he knew no more. Although they do not confess it so plainly, there are many persons whose knowledge of fungi is very little in advance of this. To them it would seem incredulous that three thousand different species of fungi had been found in the British Isles, and that not less than twenty-five thousand species are scattered over the face of the globe.

It is not a very easy task to describe in a few plain words what constitutes a fungus, since with the minuter accuracy of scientific language no such definition yet attempted has been absolutely satisfactory. That they are plants of a low organization is undoubted, growing on the ground, or on other plants as parasites, and obtaining their support from the

decay of animal and vegetable matter. It may be accepted as a general rule that wherever fungi are found growing they are in intimate association with, and as the result of, disease and decay. Dead leaves, rotten twigs, and putrid fruits are rapidly disintegrated by the growth of fungi. By this means trees manure their own soil, being assisted in that operation by fungi converting their rejectamenta into vegetable humus, and thus an obscure and little known class of

plants perform their part in the circle of Nature, confirming good old George Herbert :

"More servants wait on man

Than he'll take notice of: in every path

He treads down that which doth befriend him
When sickness makes him pale and wan.
Oh, mighty love! Man is one world, and hath
Another to attend him."

One of the most imposing and attractive of fungi is the Fly Agaric, which grows on the ground in woods. It has a snow-white stem, swollen like an onion-bulb at the base, about six or eight inches high, with a spreading cap on the top, five or six inches in breadth, of the most beautiful and vivid crimson, often with a yellow tint at the edge, and sprinkled over the surface with dirty white or yellowish patches, or warts. Once seen this is never to be forgotten. Most beautiful to the eye, but to the taste one of the most poisonous species that grows; a small fragment being sufficient to produce a kind of intoxication, for which purpose it has long been in use in Kamtschatka, whilst in Southern and Western Europe its use as a poison for killing flies is said to have been the origin of its name of Agaricus muscarius, or Fly Agaric. During the past few years it has been discovered that this agaric, which had for so long a period been supposed to have no higher use than the poisoning of flies, is in reality a most valuable medicinal agent. The poison of the nightshade family and that of this agaric being found to be antidotes to each other, the one may be employed to counteract the other. In other words, the alkaloid amanitine, obtained from the fungus, neutralises atropine, and solanine, the