renewed and special order; and it is only by accident that the purchasers, some of them, at least, come to know when such order may be given with effect. Mr. Swainson's polite message to me on the subject of returning my copy to him through Messrs. Longman, as well as my own good wishes for the success of his undertaking, have induced me to add these latter remarks, in the hope that they may be of service to him. I am, Sir, yours, &c. Nov. 14. 1831. A. R. Y. THE MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. MARCH, 1832. ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. ART. I. Fairy Rings. By JOHN F. M. DOVASTON, Esq. A.M., of Westfelton, near Shrewsbury. "'T is very pregnant, The jewel that we find, we stoop and take it, Measure for Measure. Sir, THE fair authoress of The Mummy well and wisely observes that "There is an invincible feeling implanted by nature in the mind of man, which makes him shudder with disgust at any thing that invades her laws." To such who study and esteem her laws, there cannot be a truth more triumphant. Yet the unthinking mind of man not only indulges in, but doats on, mysteries without meaning, and superstitions without support. Some of these, indeed, in themselves innocent, have, by the genius of poets, been made the vehicles of elegant amusement, and allegorical instruction; while others, dismal and diabolical, have, by the cunning of bigots, become predatory on society, and blasphemous to Heaven. There is a perverse propensity in unenlightened minds to embrace the incomprehensible, and reject the obvious; and millions at this moment implicitly believe in Nixon's Prophecies, and those of Moore's Almanack, who smile with coarse incredulity at VOL. V.-No. 24. I being told of the rotatory motions of our globe, or the cause of an eclipse: doubting what is demonstrable to a child of the commonest capacity, and admitting what would stagger the soundest philosopher. Like the poor woman who, receiving her son from the West Indies, listened with satisfactory conviction to his marvellous narrations of rocks of sugar and rivers of rum, but shuddered, and gave him the flattest contradiction, when he averred that he had seen fishes that could fly; when a moment's reflection, even of her mind, would have shown as near an affinity between fowls and fishes, as between sugar and sand. But these good though simple souls, "most ignorant of what they 're most assured," whose delight is in the marvellous, did they but turn to Nature, would find her kingdom peopled and furnished with incalculably more wonders, ay, and true ones too (were that any recommendation), and each perspicuously and indubitably indicating almighty power, wisdom, and benevolence, than all the abortions that were ever spawned from the monstrous womb of Superstition; even more incongruous and copious than "the stuff which dreams are made of,"- more charming, more changing, and more enchanting. What are the tricks and transformations of the most cunning necromancer, compared to the metamorphoses of millions of insects, that actually, and almost hourly, unfold before us; from the smooth and compact egg, to the rough and frightful reptile, through the curious mummy of a chrysalis, to the splendid and celestial butterfly? Look at the myriads of monadal and polypodal molluscous creatures that people every part of the multitudinous ocean! Minuteness, indeed, rather than an argument against, is an augmentation of, astonishment; equal wisdom being displayed, and wonder excited, in the articulations of an elephant or an aphis, in the ramifications of a forest or a fern, in the fructification of a melon or a moss; indeed, the last is incomparably the most intricate and interesting. Look at the fantastic and often, at first, repulsive formations, and apparent deformities, of these creatures of the waters, with limbs and organs in every place and shape but what we expect, and tentacles hundreds of times longer than themselves! Why, heraldry itself never came up to these, with all its hippogryphs, dragons, wiverns, hydras, chimeras, and amphisbænas dire. Some flowers that are now brought from abroad are so extravagantly eccentric in composition, so magnificent in structure, and so dazzlingly glaring in colours, that the most imaginative painter would never have thought of limning such. Some parasites so expansive and ponderous, having blossoms many feet in diameter, exist on trailing plants utterly unable to support themselves. Nay, the momentary actions of nature are ceaseless successions of miracle; evaporation, condensation, suspension of odour, and vibration of sound. Even poetry is surpassed; for what fairy grotto ever equalled the feathery crystallisations of a frosted pane, glistening and sparkling in splendid brilliance? Or what sparry groves or coral caves of the Nereids, deep in the vast abysms of ocean, could ever vie with a silent frost-forest; heavily still, and candied with spikes of hoary rime, spangling and blushing in the earliest beams of the golden sun? What gigantic palace of enchantment copes in splendour with the columnar shafts of icicles congealed around a winter waterfall? or, in curious castellets, embrasures, and bastions, with the masses of powdery snow sifted fantastically through a hedge into a deep lane? Thus, though lost in the immensity of boundless space, all breathing with creation, the humble student of nature, one of the happiest of earth's creatures, may exclaim with the sublime Callias (in Anacharsis), "The insect which obtains a glimpse of infinity partakes of the greatness which overwhelms it;" and may cordially say with the philosopher, " Even to such an one as I am, an idiota, or common person, no great things, melancholising in woods and quiet places, by rivers, the goddesse herself, Truth, has oftentimes appeared:" but on opening his eyes on the pampered and artificial world (whether civil or religious), he will feel with King Lear's honest fool, that "Truth's a dog that must to kennel; he must be whipped out, when Lady, the brach, may lie by the fire and stink." It is an unconfutable truth, that among people who have made the greatest progress in natural history, their ideas of the Deity have always been more refined, exalted, and sublime; while in the darkness of theirs where that science has slept, or been sluggish, their notions of his nature and attributes have been derogatory, detestable, and even diabolical. 66 But to my intention; or I shall be like Bayle, who, in his work on comets, has forgotten them, and filled his volumes with every thing beside, eccentrically erratic: and so may I be herein like a stuffed toucan, all bill and no body. I was led into this lengthened preliminary by some reflections on fairy rings, for the cause of which I think I can account, without offence to that airy people, for whom I confess I have a hankering fondness, in consideration of one William Shakspeare, and his fanciful brethren, who have given them a permanent ascendency they long ere this had lost, but for the embalming power of song; so I shall proceed with all due loyalty to the jealous King Oberon, his crown and dignity: confining myself to the two prevailing opinions of their cause; the first whereof I think I shall confute, and establish the second. Let the incredulous in philosophy continue their superstition; this is a harmless one: for though the fairies have long ago left off dropping testers in our shoes, they do not pick our pockets. It is asserted that these rings are occasioned by centrifugal fungi, which the ground is only capable of producing once; and these, dropping their seeds outwards, extend the rings, "like circles on the water." Fungi I conceive to be the effect, and not the cause, of these rings: and ground producing fungi once, is not incapable of reproductiveness, as the possessors of old mushroom-beds well know; for simply by watering, they will reproduce exuberantly, without fresh spawn, for many years. Besides, we find all these fungi without rings, plentifully; but very rarely without some visible (and never perhaps without some latent) excitement; such as dung, combustion, decomposing wood, or weeds; indeed, the seeds of fungi are so absolutely impalpable, that I have sometimes thought they are taken up with the juices into the capillary tubes of all vegetables, and so appear, when decomposition affords them a pabulum and excitement, on rotten wood and leaves: and this seed is produced in such excessive quantities, thrown off so freely, and borne about so easily, that perhaps there is hardly a particle of matter whose surface is not imbued therewith; and had these seeds the power of germinating by mere wetness alone, without some other exciting cause, all surface would be crowded with them. and pasturage impeded. Now, were these rings caused by the falling of the seeds centrifugally, they would enlarge, which they do not, but after a year or two, utterly disappear; though plenty of the seed may be seen to load the grass all around. I have brought large patches of these rings into other fields, but never found them enlarge; and the turf I have taken back to replace in the rings has never partaken of their nature. Why, too, should the grass be more rank in the rings? one would conclude the seeds of fungi would make it less so. Now, the exciting cause that occasions these fungi, and deeper verdure to come up in circles, the true, the nimble fairies "That do by moonshine green sour ringlets make, |