THE WILD CLEMATIS.

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the bramble being in some places the only thriving vegetation in a fence. It is marvellous how fibrous-rooted vegetables, the roots of which penetrate no depth into the soil, are enabled in some seasons to preserve any appearance of verdure, the earth they are fixed in seeming divested of all moisture by the power of the sun, and being heated like a sand-bath. The warmth of the earth in 1825 I omitted to record; but in the following year, which was more dry, and nearly as hot, the thermometer buried in the earth to the depth of three inches, in a flower border where many plants were growing in that sort of languid state which they present in such exhausting seasons, indicated the heat of 110°.

Having said thus much of the clematis, the "withywind" of our peasantry, it must not be supposed that I advocate the advantages of this plant as a fence, but only tolerate it where we cannot induce much else to thrive, it making something of a boundary line; and perhaps that is all, for very frequently its numerous tendrils, and the downy clusters of its caudated seeds are so interwoven, that the snow accumulates upon the bush, and presses the whole to the earth, so that in the spring we commonly find a gap to be repaired where the clematis has thriven. About February, or towards the end of winter, this plant becomes stripped of its feathery seeds, which is accomplished by mice, I believe the harvest and the long-tailed one (mus sylvaticus) principally; with these they form nest-like beds in the upper and thickest part of the hedge, resorting to them in the day-time, where they enjoy in tolerable safety the air and warmth of the season, in preference to their cold and damp apartments in the earth, and I have occasionally disturbed them in their dormitories; but at this time it is not observed that the seeds are much fed upon by them, and probably are only collected as shelter in a temporary dwelling.

The little excursions of the naturalist, from habit and from acquirement, become a scene of constant observation and remark. The insect that crawls, the note of the bird, the plant that flowers, or the vernal green

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NATURALIST'S AUTUMNAL WALK.

leaf that peeps out, engages his attention, is recognized as an intimate, or noted from some novelty that it presents in sound or aspect. Every season has its peculiar product, and is pleasing or admirable, from causes that variously affect our different temperaments or dispositions; but there are accompaniments in an autumnal morning's woodland walk, that call for all our notice and admiration: the peculiar feeling of the air, and the solemn grandeur of the scene around us, dispose the mind to contemplation and remark; there is a silence in which we hear every thing, a beauty that will be observed. The stump of an old oak is a very landscape, with rugged alpine steeps bursting through forests of verdant mosses, with some pale, denuded, branchless lichen, like a scathed oak, creeping up the sides or crowning the summit. Rambling with unfettered grace, the tendrils of the briony (tamus communis) festoon with its brilliant berries, green, yellow, red, the slender sprigs of the hazel, or the thorn; it ornaments their plainness, and receives a support its own feebleness denies. The agaric, with all its hues, its shades, its elegant variety of forms, expands its cone sprinkled with the freshness of the morning; a transient fair, a child of decay, that “ sprang up in a night, and will perish in a night." The squirrel, agile with life and timidity, gamboling round the root of an ancient beech, its base overgrown with the dewberry (rubus cæsius), blue with unsullied fruit, impeded in his frolic sports, half angry, darts up the silvery bole again, to peep and wonder at the strange intruder on his haunts. The jay springs up, and, screaming, tells of danger to her brood; the noisy tribe repeat the call, are hushed, and leave us; the loud laugh of the woodpecker, joyous and vacant; the hammering of the nuthatch (sitta europea), cleaving its prize in the chink of some dry bough; the humblebee, torpid on the disk of the purple thistle, just lifts a limb to pray forbearance of injury, to ask for peace, and bid us

"Leave him, leave him to repose."

The cinquefoil, or the vetch, with one lingering bloom

NATURALIST'S AUTUMNAL WALK.

85

yet appears, and we note it from its loneliness. Spreading on the light foliage of the fern, dry and mature, the spider has fixed her toils, and motionless in the midst watches her expected prey, every thread and mesh beaded with dew, trembling with the zephyr's breath. Then falls the "sere and yellow leaf," parting from its spray without a breeze tinkling in the boughs, and rustling scarce audibly along, rests at our feet, and tells us that we part too. All these are distinctive symbols of the season, marked in the silence and sobriety of the hour; and form, perhaps, a deeper impression on the mind, than any afforded by the verdant promises, the vivacities of spring, or the gay, profuse luxuriance of summer.

Such notes as these, such passing observations, are perhaps little fitted for, or deserving of, arrangement, yet, in a woodland autumnal ramble, we are naturally, almost irresistibly, led to contemplate that beautiful and varied race of vegetation included under the name of fungi, so particularly fostered by this season, and which so greatly delight to spring up in sylvan moisture and decay: nor is there perhaps any country better constituted for the production of the whole of this family than England is, particularly that portion of them denominated agarics. The various natures of our soil and pastures, the profusion of our woods and copses, the humidity of our climate, united with the general warmth of our autumn, accelerating rapid decay, and putrescence of vegetable matter, all combine to give existence to this race. No county is, I believe, more favored for the production of most of the kinds than Monmouth, with its deep dark woods, and alpine downs. A residence in that portion of the kingdom for some years introduced to my notice a larger portion of this singu lar race than every botanist is acquainted with. A sportsman then, but I fear I shall be called a recreant brother of the craft, when I own having more than once let my woodcock escape, to secure and bear away some of these fair but perishable children of the groves. Travellers tell us of the splendor of this race in the jungles of Madagascar, but nothing surely can exceed the beauty H

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BEAUTIES OF THE FUNGI RACE.

of some old copse in Monmouthshire, deep in the valley, calm, serene, shaded by the pensile, elegant, autumnal-tinted sprays of the birch, the ground enamelled with every colored agaric, from the deep scarlet to pallid white, the gentle gray, and sober brown, and all their intermediate shadings. Fungi must be considered as an appendage and ornament of autumn; they are not generally in healthy splendor until fostered by the evening damps and dews of September, and in this season no part of the vegetable world can exceed them in elegance of form, and gentleness of fabrication : but these fragile children of the earth are beauties of an hour:

"Transient as the morning dew,
They glitter and exhale,"

and must be viewed before advancing age changes all their features. There is a pale gray fungus (agaricus fimiputris) that may very commonly be observed in September on the edges of heaps of manure, and in pasture grounds, most beautifully delicate, almost like colored water just congealed, trembling in the air from the slightness of its form, its sober tints softly blending with each other, lined and penciled with an exactitude and lightness that defy imitation. The verdigris agaric (agaricus æruginosus) is found under tall hedge-rows, and near shady banks, and few can exceed it in beauty when just risen from its mossy bed in all the freshness of morning and of youth, its pale green-blue head varnished with the moisture of an autumnal day; the veil, irregularly festooned around its margin, glittering like a circlet of emeralds and topazes from the reflected colors of the pileus. But it is by examination alone that the beauties of this despised race can be perceived, not by a partial and inadequate description.

The certain appearance of many of the fungi can by no means be relied upon, they being as irregular in their visits as some of the lepidopterous class of insects. It is probable that decayed vegetable matter is in most cases the source whence this race of plants arises, while a certain degree of moisture and temperature, acting in concord with a precise state of decay, appears neces

MUTATIONS OF THE FUNGI.

.87

sary to influence the sprouting of the seminal or radical matter. The beautiful floriform hydnum (hydnum floriforme) is very irregular in its appearance, whence it is a species seldom found by the botanist. The mitred helvella (helvella mitra) will abound, and then years may intervene and not a specimen be discovered. In 1825, a little, gray puff-ball (lycoperdon cinereum), about the size of a large pin's head, abounded, covering patches of grass in all our fields, looking like froth, and in decay, when discharging its seed, like a spongy curd; though it had not been observed, not having vegetated, or very sparingly, for upwards of ten years. Others again, particularly the ligneous ones, remain permanently fixed for a long period. The fingered clavaria (clavaria hypoxylon) may be found vegetating on the stump of an old hazel in the orchard for twenty years in succession. That this elegant race has attracted so few votaries many reasons may be assigned. The agarics in particular are very versatile in their nature, and we frequently want an obvious, permanent character, to indicate the species, affording sufficient conviction of the individual. The rapid powers of vegetation in some will change the form and hues almost before a delineation can be made, or an examination take place, requiring nearly a residence with them to become acquainted with their various mutations; and we have no method of preserving them to answer the purpose of comparison. These are all serious impediments to the investigation of this class; yet, perhaps, I may with some confidence suggest, that any one, who is so circumstanced as to afford the time, so situated as to find a supply of these productions, and will bestow on them a patient examination, will find both pleasure and gratification in contemplating the beauty, the mechanism, the forms, the attitudes, of the whole order of fungi.

As far as we can observe, it appears to be an established ordinance of nature, that all created things must have a final period. This mandate is effected by various means, slow and nearly imperceptible in some cases, but operative in all. As in the animal world, after disease or violence has extinguished life, the dispersion is