FAIRY RINGS AND HOW THEY ARE MADE
[Illustration]
It was a lovely warm day in September, the golden corn had been cut and
carted, and the waggons of the farmers around were free for the use of
the college lads in their yearly 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 beside them
with their long whips ornamented with coloured ribbons; and as each
waggon drew up before the door, it filled rapidly with its merry load
and went on its way.
They had a long drive of seven miles before them, for they were going to
cross the wild moor, and then descend gradually along a fairly good road
to the more wooded and fertile country. Their object that day was to
reach a certain fairy dell known to a few only among the party as one of
the loveliest spots in Devon. It was a perfect day for a picnic. As they
drove over the wide stretches 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 for the little Sundew (_Drosera rotundifolia_). Though this
little plant had now almost ceased to flower, it was not difficult to
recognise by its rosette of leaves glistening with sticky glands which
it spreads out in many of the Dartmoor bogs to catch the tiny flies and
suck out their life's blood, and several specimens were uprooted and
carefully packed away to plant in moist moss at home.
From this bog onwards the road ran near by one of the lovely streams
which feed the rivers below, and, passing across a bridge covered with
ivy, led through a small forest of stunted trees round which the
woodbine clung, hanging down its crimson berries, 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 large blocks of granite strewn over it here and there, and
furze bushes growing under their shelter, still covered with yellow
blossoms together with countless seed-bearing pods, which the
youngsters soon gathered for the shiny-black seeds within them.
Here the waggons were unspanned, the horses tethered out, the food
unpacked, and preparations for the picnic soon in full swing. Just at
this moment, however, a loud 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 might be seen three
delicate green rings, the fresh sprouting grass growing young and tender
in perfect circles measuring from six feet to nearly three yards across.
"What are they?" The question came from many voices at once, but it was
the Principal who answered.
"Why, do you not know that they are pixie circles, where the 'elves of
hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves' hold their revels, whirling
in giddy round, and making the rings, 'whereof the ewe not bites'? Have
you forgotten how Mrs. Quickly, in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, tells
us that
"'nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing,
Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring:
The expressure that it bears, green let it be,
More fertile-fresh than all the field to see'?
"If we are magicians and work spells under magic glasses, why should not
the pixies work spells on the grass? I brought you here to-day on
purpose to see them. Which of you now can name the pixie who makes
them?"
A deep silence followed. If any knew or guessed the truth of the matter,
they were too shy to risk making a mistake.
"Be off with you then," said the Principal, "and keep well away from
these rings all day, that you may not disturb the spell. But come back
to me before we return at night, and perhaps I may show you the
wonder-working pixie, and we may take him home to examine under the
microscope."
The day passed as such happy days do, and the glorious harvest moon had
risen over the distant tors before the horses were spanned and the
waggons ready. But the Principal was not at the starting place, and
looking round they saw him at the farther end of the dell.
"Gently, gently," he cried, as there was one general rush towards him;
"look where you tread, for I stand within a ring of fairies!"
And then they saw that just outside the green circle in which he stood,
forming here and there a broken ring, were patches of a beautiful tiny
mushroom, each of which raised its pale brown umbrella in the bright
moonlight.
"Here are our fairies, boys. I am going to take a few home where they
can be spared from the ring, and to-morrow we will learn their history."
* * * * *
The following day saw the class-room full, and from the benches eager
eyes were turned to the eight windows, in each of which stood one of the
elder boys at his microscope ready for work. For under those microscopes
the Principal always arranged some object referred to in his lecture and
figured in diagrams 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 had the plant or animal always under their
eye. Discussion was at this moment running high, for there was a great
uncertainty of opinion as to whether a mushroom could be really called a
plant when it had no leaves or flowers. All at once the hush came, as
the Principal stepped into his desk and began:--
"Life is hard work, boys, and there is no being in this world which has
not to work for its living. You all know that a plant grows by taking in
gases and water, 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 full of green plants that hundreds and
thousands of young seedlings can never get a living, but are stifled in
their babyhood or destroyed before they can grow up.
"Now there are many dark, dank places in the world where plants cannot
get enough sunlight and air to make green colouring matter and
manufacture their own food. And so it comes to pass that a certain class
of plants have found another 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 drains and pipes
where no light ever enters, under a thick covering of dead leaves in the
forest, under fallen trunks and mossy stones; in fact, wherever
decaying matter, whether of plant or animal, can be found for them to
feed upon.
"It is to this class, called _fungi_, which includes all mushrooms and
moulds, mildews, smuts, and ferments, that the mushroom belongs which we
found yesterday making the fairy rings. And, in truth, we were not so
far wrong when we called them pixies or imps, for many of them 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 other hand, they
are useful in clearing out unhealthy nooks and corners, and purifying
the air; and they can be made to do good work by those who know how to
use them; for without ferments we could have neither wine, beer, nor
vinegar, nor even the yeast which lightens our bread.
"I am going to-day to introduce you to this large vagabond class of
plants, that we may see how they live, grow, and spread, what good and
bad work they do, and how they do it. And before we come to the
mushrooms, which you know so well, we must look at the smaller forms,
which do all their work above ground, so that we can observe them. For
the _fungi_ are to be found almost everywhere. The film growing over
manure-heaps, the yeast plant, the wine fungus, and the vinegar 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 we eat, and the truffles which
form even their fruit underground,--all these are _fungi_, or lowly
plants which have given up making their own food in the sunlight, and
take it ready made from the dung, the decaying mould, the root, the
leaf, the fruit, or the germ on which they grow. Lastly, the diseases
which kill the silkworm and the common house-fly, and even some of the
worst skin diseases in man, are caused by minute plants of this class
feeding upon their hosts."
[Illustration: Fig. 22.
Three forms of vegetable mould magnified.
1, _Mucor Mucedo_. 2, _Aspergillus glaucus_. 3, _Penicillium glaucum_.]
"In fact, the _fungi_ are so widely spread over all things living and
dead, that there is scarcely anything free from them in one shape or
another. The minute spores, now of one kind, now of another, float in
the air, and settling down wherever they find suitable food, have
nothing more to do than to feed, fatten, and increase, which they do
with wonderful rapidity. Let us take as an example 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, _Penicillium glaucum_ (3, Fig. 22); but I must warn you
that these minute moulds look very much alike until you examine them
under the microscope, and though they are called white, blue, or green
moulds, yet any one of them may be coloured at different times of its
growth. Another very common and beautiful mould, _Aspergillus glaucus_
(2, Fig. 22), often grows with Mucor on the top of jam.
"All these plants begin with a spore or minute colourless cell of living
matter (_s_, Fig. 23), which spends its energy in sending out tubes in
all directions into the leaves, fruit, or paste on which it feeds. The
living matter, flowing 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 number of minute seed-like bodies
called spores are formed. The ball bursts, the spores fall out, and each
one begins to form fresh tubes, and so little by little the mould grows
denser and thicker by new plants starting in all directions.
"Under the first microscope you will see a slide showing the tubes which
spread through the paste, and which are called the _mycelium_ (_m_, Fig.
23), and amongst it are three upright tubes, one just starting _a_,
another with the fruit ball forming _b_, and a third _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 of the upright tube, and
can very easily be separated (see Fig. 22); while _Aspergillus_, a most
lovely silvery mould, is more complicated in the growth of its spores,
for it bears them on many rows branching out from the top of the tube
like the rays of a star."
[Illustration: Fig. 23.
_Mucor Mucedo_, greatly magnified. (After Sachs and Brefeld.)
_m_, Mycelium, or tangle of threads. _a_, _b_, _c_, Upright tubes in
different stages. _c_, Spore-case bursting and sending out spores. _s_,
1, 2, 3, A growing spore, in different stages, starting a new mycelium.]
"I want you to look at each of these moulds carefully under the
microscope, for few people who hastily scrape a mould away, vexed to
find it on food or damp clothing, have any idea what a delicate and
beautiful structure lies under their hand. These 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 another fungus attacks its leaves. There is scarcely a
tree or herb which has not one fungus to prey upon it, and many have
several, as, for example, the common lime-tree, which is infested by
seventy-four different fungi, and the oak by no less than 200.
"So these colourless food-taking plants prey upon their neighbours,
while they take their oxygen for breathing from air. The 'ferments,'
however, which live _inside_ plants or fluids, take even their oxygen
for breathing from their hosts.
"If you go into the garden in summer and pluck an overripe gooseberry,
which is bursting like this one I have here, you will probably find that
the pulp looks unhealthy and rotten near the split, and the gooseberry
will taste tart and disagreeable. This is 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 crept inside the gooseberry where it could no longer get
any fresh air. In this dilemma it was forced to break up the sugar in
the fruit and take the oxygen out of it, leaving behind only alcohol and
carbonic acid which give the fermented taste to the fruit.
"So the fungus-imp feeds and grows in nature, and when man gets hold of
it he forces it to do the same work for a useful purpose, for the
grape-fungus grows in the vats in which grapes are 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 liquor, turning it into beer; its spores
floating in the fluid and increasing at a marvellous rate, as any
housewife knows who, getting yeast for her bread, tries to keep it in a
corked bottle.
"The yeast plant has never been found wild. It is only known as a
cultivated plant, growing on prepared liquor. The brewer has to sow it
by taking some yeast from other beer, or by leaving the liquor exposed
to air in which yeast spores are floating; 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
cell will break up into four parts instead of two, and so four new cells
will start and bud. A drop of yeast will very soon cover a glass slide
with this tiny plant, as you will see under the second microscope, where
they are now at work (Fig. 24)."
[Illustration: Fig. 24.
Yeast cells growing under the microscope. _a_, Single cells. _b_, Two
cells forming by division. _c_, A group of cells where division is going
on in all directions.]
"But perhaps the most curious of all the minute fungi are those which
grow inside insects and destroy them. At this time of year you may
often see a dead fly sticking to the window-pane with a cloudy white
ring round it; this poor fly has been killed by a little fungus called
_Empusa muscae_. A spore from a former plant has fallen perhaps on the
window-pane, or some other spot over which the fly has crawled, and
being sticky has fixed itself under the fly's body. Once 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 thrown from them, which you see forming a
kind of halo round the dead fly as it clings to the pane. Other fungi in
the same way kill the silkworm and the caterpillars of the cabbage
butterfly. Nor is it only the lower animals which suffer. When we once
realise that fungus spores are floating everywhere in the air, we can
understand how the terrible microscopic fungi called _bacteria_ will
settle on an open wound and cause it to fester if it is not properly
dressed.
"Thus we see that these minute fungi are almost everywhere. The larger
ones, on the contrary, are confined to the fields and forests, damp
walls and hollow trees; or wherever rotting wood, leaves, or manure
provide 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 more than a gigantic mould or mildew, only that it is
formed of many different shaped cells, and spreads its tubes
_underground_ or through the trunks of trees instead of in paste or jam,
as in the case of the mould."
[Illustration: Fig. 25.
Early stages of the mushroom. (After Sachs.)
_m_, Mycelium. _b1-3_, Mushroom buds of different ages. _b4_, Button
mushroom. _g_, Gills forming inside before lower attachment of the cap
gives way at _v_.]
"The part which we gather and call a mushroom, a toadstool, or a
puffball is only the fruit, answering to the round balls of the mould.
The rest of the plant is a thick network of tubes, which you will see
under the third microscope. These tubes spread underground and suck in
decayed matter from the earth; they form the _mycelium_ (_m_, Fig. 25)
such as we found in the mould. The mushroom-growers call it 'mushroom
spawn' because they use it to spread over the ground for new crops. 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 series of folds made of long
cells, some of which are soon to bear spores just as the tubes in the
mould did, and while these are forming and ripening, a way out is
preparing for them. For as the mushroom grows, the skin of the lower
part of the ball (_v_, _b4_) is stretched more and more, till it can
bear the strain no longer and breaks away from the stalk; then the ball
expands into an umbrella, leaving a piece of torn skin, called the veil
(_v_, Fig. 26), clinging to the stalk."
[Illustration: Fig. 26.
Later stages of the mushroom. (After Gautier.)
1, Button mushroom stage. _c_, Cap. _v_, Veil. _g_, Gills.
2, Full-grown mushroom, showing veil v after the cap is quite free, and
the gills or lamellae _g_, of which the structure is shown in Fig. 27.]
"All this happens in a single night, and the mushroom is complete, with
a stem up the centre and a broad cap, under which are the folds which
bear the spores. Thus much you can 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 we
must turn to the microscope, and cutting off one of the folds, which
branch out under the cap like the spokes of a wheel, take a slice across
it (1, Fig. 27) and examine."
[Illustration: Fig. 27.
1, One of the gills or lamellae of the mushroom slightly magnified,
showing the cells round the edge. _c_, Cells which do not bear spores.
_fc_, Fertile cells. 2, A piece of the edge of the same powerfully
magnified, showing how the spores _s_ grow out of the tip of the fertile
cells _fc_.]
"First, under a moderate power, you will see the cells forming the
centre of the fold and the layer of long cells (_c_ and _fc_) which are
closely packed all 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 you can distinguish the sterile cells _c_
and the fertile cells _fc_ projecting beyond them, and each bearing
four spore-cells _s_ on four little horns at its tip.
"These spores fall off very easily, and you can make a pretty experiment
by cutting off a large mushroom head in the early morning and putting it
flat upon a piece of paper. In a few hours, if you lift it very
carefully, you will find a number 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 the size of the
head of an ordinary pin, yet if you gather the spores of the several
kinds of mushroom, and examine them under a strong microscope, you will
find that even these specks of matter assume different shapes in the
various species.
"You will be astonished too at the immense number of spores contained in
a single mushroom head, for they are reckoned by millions; and 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 spores and seeds
which must go on in nature, otherwise the mushrooms and their companions
would soon cover every inch of the whole world.
"As it is, they are spread abroad by the wind, and wherever they escape
destruction they lie waiting in every nook and corner till, after the
hot summer, showers of rain hasten the decay of plants and leaves, and
then the mushrooms, toadstools, and puffballs, grow at an astounding
pace. If you go into the woods at this season you may see the enormous
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
fungi which grow in almost every wood. From white to yellow, yellow to
red, red to crimson and purple black, there is hardly any colour you may
not find among this gaily-decked tribe; and who can wonder that the
small bright-coloured caps have been supposed to cover tiny imps or
elves, who used the large mushrooms to serve for their stools and
tables?
"There they work, thrusting their tubes into twigs and dead branches,
rotting trunks and decaying leaves, breaking up the hard wood and tough
fibres, and building them up into delicate cells, which 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 of a young seedling plant
could take no food out of a hard tree-trunk, but it finds the work done
for it by the fungus, the rich nourishment being spread around its young
roots ready to be imbibed.
"To find our fairy-ring mushrooms, however, we must leave the wood and
go out into the open country, especially on the downs and moors and
rough meadows, where the land is poor and the grass coarse and spare.
There grow the nourishing kinds, most of which we can eat, and 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 directions from the
centre, so that the mycelium forms a round patch like a thick
underground circular cobweb. In the summer and autumn, when the weather
is suitable, it sends up its delicate pale-brown caps, which we may
gather and eat without stopping the growth of the plant.
[1] Shown in initial letter of this chapter.
"This goes on year after year underground, new tubes always travelling
outwards till the circle widens and widens like the rings 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 as much as a foot thick in
the ground, and the tender tubes in the centre die away as the new ones
form a larger hoop outside.
"But all this is below ground; where then are our fairy rings? Here is
the secret. The tubes, as we have seen, take up food from the earth and
build it up into delicate cells, which decay very soon, and as they die
make a rich manure at 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 and increasing
underneath the grass, so that next year, when the present ring is no
longer richly fed, and has become faded and brown like the rest of the
moor, another ring will spring up outside it, feeding on the prepared
food below."
"In bad seasons, though the tubes go on spreading and growing below, the
mushroom fruit does not always appear above ground. The plant will only
fruit freely when the ground has been well warmed by the summer sun,
followed 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 case the early morning is the time to find them; it is only in very
sheltered spots that they sometimes last through the day, or come up
towards evening, as I found them last night on the warm damp side of the
dell.
"This is the true history of fairy rings, and now go and look for
yourselves under the microscopes. Under the first three you will find
the three different kinds of mould of our diagram (Fig. 22). Under the
fourth the spores 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 growing; the seventh shows a slice of one of the
folds of the common mushroom with its spore-bearing horns; and under the
eighth I have put some spores from different mushrooms, that you may see
what curious shapes they assume.
"Lastly, let me remind you, now that the autumn and winter are coming,
that you will find mushrooms, toadstools, puffballs, and moulds in
plenty wherever you go. Learn to know them, their different shapes and
colours, and above all the special nooks each one chooses for its home.
Look around in the 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 soil which will collect there, and then
when the spring comes, notice what tender plants flourish upon these
rich feeding grounds. You will thus see for yourselves that the fungi,
though they feed upon others, are not entirely mischief-workers, but
also perform their part in the general work of life."