Through Magic Glasses and Other Lectures

rly autumn holiday. There they stood in a long row, one behind the other in the drive round the grounds, each with a pair of sleek, powerful farm-horses, and the waggoners

s of moorland, with tors to right and tors to the left, the stunted furze bushes growing here and there glistened with spiders' webs from which the dew had not yet disappeared, and mosses in great variety carpeted the ground, from the lovely thread-mosses, with their scarlet caps, to the pale sphagnum of the bogs, where a halt was made for some of the botanists of the party to search fo

ies, and the bracken fern, already putting on its brown and yellow tints, grew tall and thick on either side. Then, as they passed out of the wood, they came upon the dell, a piece of wild moorland lying in a hollow between two granite ridges, with l

shout from one part of the dell called every one's attention. "The fairy rings! the fairy rings! we have found the fairy rings!" and there truly on the brown sward

e from many voices at once, but i

akes, and groves' hold their revels, whirling in giddy round, and making the rings, 'whereof the

adow-fairies,

arter's compa

that it bears,

esh than all th

ot the pixies work spells on the grass? I brought you here to-day on p

r guessed the truth of the matter, the

you may not disturb the spell. But come back to me before we return at night, and perhaps I m

istant tors before the horses were spanned and the waggons ready. But the Principal was

general rush towards him; "look where you t

rming here and there a broken ring, were patches of a beautiful tiny mushr

a few home where they can be spared from the r

agrams on the walls, and it was the duty of each boy, after the lecture was over, to show and explain to the class all the points of the specimen under his care. These boys were always specially envied, for though the others could, it is true, follow all the descriptions from the diagrams, yet these h

r, and working them up into sap and living tissue by the help of the sunshine and the green matter in their leaves; and you know, too, that the world is so ful

her way of living, by taking their food ready made from other decaying plants and animals, and so avoiding the necessity of manufacturing it for themselves. These plants can live hidden away in dark cellars and damp cupboards, in dr

are indeed imps of mischief, which play sorry pranks in our stores at home and in the fields and forest abroad. They grow on our damp bread, or cheese, or pickles; they destroy fruit and corn, hop and vine, and even take the life of insects and other animals. Yet, on the oth

gar plant; the moulds and mildews covering our cellar-walls and cupboards, or growing on decayed leaves and wood, on stale fruit, bread, or jam, or making black spots on the leaves of the rose, the hop, or the vine; the potato fungus, eating into the potato in the dark ground and producing disease; the smut filling the grains of wheat and oats with disease, the ergot feeding on the rye, the rust which destroys beetroot, the rank toadstools and puffballs, the mushroom

g.

f vegetable m

spergillus glaucus. 3

ample one of the moulds which covers damp leaves, and even the paste and jam in our cupboard. I have some here growing upon a basin of paste, and you see it forms a kind of dense white fur all over the surface, with here and there a bluish-green tinge upon it. This white fur is the common mould, Mucor Mucedo (1, Fig. 22), and the green mould happens in this case to be another mould, P

ng now this way now that, lays down the walls of its tubes as it flows, and by and by, here and there, a tube, instead of working into the paste, grows upwards into the air and swells at the tip into a colourless ball in which a numb

c, which is bursting and throwing out the spores. The Aspergillus and the Penicillium differ from the Mucor in having their spores naked and not enclosed in a spore-case. In Penicillium they grow like the beads of a necklace one above the other on the top o

g.

ly magnified. (Afte

rent stages. c, Spore-case bursting and sending out spores. s, 1,

moulds live on decaying matter, but many of the mildews, rusts, and other kinds of fungus, prey upon living plants such as the smut of oats (Ustilago carbo), and the bunt (Tilletia caria) which eats away the inside of the grains of wheat, while anoth

take their oxygen for breathing from air. The 'ferments,' however, which live

because a small fungus has grown inside, and worked a change in the juice of the fruit. At first this fungus spread its tubes outside and merely fed upon the fruit, using oxygen from the air in breathing; but by and by the skin gave way, and the fungus cr

crushed and kept away from air, and tearing up the sugar, leaves alcohol behind in the grape-juice, which in this way becomes wine. So, too, the yeast-fungus grows in the malt and hop liq

ingle cells. b, Two cells forming by division. c, A gro

ting; or it will sow itself in the same way in a mixture of water, hops, sugar, and salt, to which a handful of flour is added. It increases at a marvellous rate, one cell budding out of another, while from time to time the living matter in a ce

nce settled on a favourable spot it sends out a tube, and piercing the skin of the fly, begins to grow rapidly inside. There it forms little round cells one after the other, something like the yeast-cells, till it fills the whole body, feeding on its juices; then each cell sends a tube, like the upright tubes of the Mucor (Fig. 23) out again through the fly's skin, and this tube bursts at the end, and so new spores are set free. It is these tubes, and the spores

them with sufficient nourishment. Few people have any clear ideas about the growth of a mushroom, except that the part we pick springs up in a single night. The real fact is, that a whole mushroom plant is nothing

g.

f the mushroom

s. b4, Button mushroom. g, Gills forming inside b

rops. Out of these underground tubes there springs up from time to time a swollen round body no bigger at first than a mustard seed (b1, Fig. 25). As it increases in size it comes above ground and grows into the mushroom or spore-case, answering to the round balls which contain the spores of the mould. At first this swollen body is egg-shaped, the top half being largest and broadest, and the fruit is then called a 'button-mushroom' b4. Inside this ball are now formed a se

g.

the mushroom.

m stage. c, Cap.

he cap is quite free, and the gills or lamell?

n see for yourselves at any time by finding a place where mushrooms grow and looking for them late at night and early in the morning so as to get the different stages. But now

g.

e edge. c, Cells which do not bear spores. fc, Fertile cells. 2, A piece of the edge of the s

round the edge. Some of these cells project beyond the others, and it is they which bear the spores. We see this plainly under a very strong power when yo

ber of dark lines on the paper, radiating from a centre like the spokes of a wheel, each line being composed of the spores which have fallen from a fold as it grew ripe. They are so minute that many thousands would be required to make up th

when we remember that each one of these is the starting point of a new plant, it reminds us forcibly of the wholesale destruction of s

us deep-red liver fungus (Fistulina hepatica) growing on the oak-trees, in patches which weigh from twenty to thirty pounds; or the glorious orange-coloured fungus (Tremella mesenterica) growing on bare sticks or stumps of furze; or among dead leaves you may easily chance on the little caps of the crimson, scarlet, snowy white, or orange-coloured f

h by and by die and leave their remains as food for the early growing plants in the spring. So we see that in their way the mushrooms and toadstools are good imps after all, for the tender shoot o

nd among these is the delicate little champignon or 'Scotch-bonnet' mushroom, Marasmius Oreades,[1] which makes the fairy-rings. When a spore of this mushroom begins to grow, it sucks up vegetable food out of the earth and spreads its tubes underground, in all directio

s of water on a pond, only that it spreads very slowly, making a new ring each year, which is often composed of a mass of tubes

the roots of the grass. So each season the cells of last year's ring make a rich feeding-ground for the young grass, which springs up fresh and green in a fairy ring, while outside this emerald circle the mushroom tubes are still growing

ollowed by damp weather to moisten it. This gives us a rich crop of mushrooms all over the country, and it is then you can best see the ring of fairy mushrooms circling outside the green hoop of fresh grass. In any

res of the mould are shown in their first growth putting out the tubes to form the mycelium. The fifth shows the mould itself with its fruit-bearing tubes, one of which is bursting. Under the sixth the yeast plant is grow

e fields and woods and take note of the decaying plants and trees, leaves and bark, insects and dead remains of all kinds. Upon each of these you will find some fungus growing, breaking up their tissues and devouring the nourishing food they provide. Watch these spots, and note the soft spongy soi

nitial letter