anches of the low-growing elm from which to hang its fruit
clusters. Circling up the trunk and the spreading branches of the elm,
the Virginia creeper likewise strives for better and greater light.
Flower and vine, shrub and tree, each with its own peculiar inherited
tendencies resulting from millions of years of development, strives
ever for perfection. Shall man, with the civilization of untold
centuries at his back to push him on, do less? Endowed with mind and
heart, with spiritual aspirations and a free will, shall he dare cease
to grow? Equipped so magnificently for the light, dare he deliberately
seek the darkness and allow his mental and spiritual fruits to wither?
These are questions to ponder as the afternoon shadows lengthen.

If you walk through the wooded pasture, close by the side of the
roadside fence, the hollow stumps hold rain-water, like huge tankards
for a feast. Sometimes a shaft of sunlight shoots into the water,
making it glow with color. Fungi in fantastic shapes are plentiful.
Growing from the side of a stump, the stem of the fawn-colored pluteus
bends upwards to the light. Golden clavarias cover fallen trunks with
coral masses and creamy ones are so delicately fragile that you almost
fear to touch them lest you mar their beauty. Brown brackets send out
new surfaces of creamy white on which the children may stencil their
names. That vivid yellow on a far stump is the sulphur-colored
polyporus. Green and red Russulas delight the eye. The lactaria sheds
hot, white milk when you cut it, and the inky coprinus sheds black
rain of its own accord. Puff-balls scatter their spores when you smite
them and the funnel-shaped clitocybe holds water as a wine-glass holds
Sauterne.

Springing from a log lying by the fence a dozen plants of the
glistening coprinus have reared themselves since morning, fresh from
the rain and flavored as sweet as a nut. Narrow furrows and sharp
ridges adorn their drooping caps; these in turn are decorated with
tiny shining scales. Nibbling at the nut-like flesh, I am touched with
the nicety, the universality of nature's appeal to the finer senses
and sentiments. Here is form and color and sparkle to please the eye,
flesh tender to the touch, aroma that tests the subtlest sense of
smell, taste that recalls stories of Epicurean feasts, millions of
life-germs among the purple-black gills, ready to float in the streams
of the atmosphere to distant realms and other cycles of life. No