tion of their importance as
objects for nature study. There are many useful as well as interesting
lessons taught by mushrooms to those who stop to read their stories. The
long growth period of the spawn in the ground, or in the tree trunk,
where it may sometimes be imprisoned for years, sometimes a century, or
more, before the mushroom appears, is calculated to dispel the popular
notion that the mushroom "grows in a night." Then from the button stage
to the ripe fruit, several days, a week, a month, or a year may be
needed, according to the kind, while some fruiting forms are known to
live from several to eighty or more years. The adjustment of the fruit
cap to a position most suitable for the scattering of the spores, the
different ways in which the fruit cap opens and expands, the different
forms of the fruit surface, their colors and other peculiarities,
suggest topics for instructive study and observation. The inclination,
just now becoming apparent, to extend nature study topics to include
mushrooms is an evidence of a broader and more sympathetic attitude
toward nature.

A little extension of one's observation on the habits of these plants in
the woods will reveal the fact that certain ones are serious enemies of
timber trees and timber. It is quite easy in many cases for one
possessing no technical knowledge of the subject to read the story of
these "wood destroying" fungi in the living tree. Branches broken by
snow, by wind, or by falling timber provide entrance areas where the
spores, lodging on the heart wood of broken timber, or on a bruise on
the side of the trunk which has broken through the living part of the
tree lying just beneath the bark, provide a point for entrance. The
living substance (_protoplasm_) in the spawn exudes a "juice" (_enzyme_)
which dissolves an opening in the wood cells and permits the spawn to
enter the heart of the tree, where decay rapidly proceeds as a result.
But very few of these plants can enter the tree when the living part
underneath the bark is unbroken.

These observations suggest useful topics for thought. They suggest
practical methods of prevention, careful forestry treatment and careful
lumbering to protect the young growth when timber trees are felled. They
suggest careful pruning of fruit and shade trees, by cutting limbs
smooth and close to the trunk, and then painting the smooth surface with
some lead paint.

While we are thus apt to regard many of the mushrooms