The wonderful phenomenon of phosphorescence is not a special gift to the animal kingdom. Henry O. Forbes describes a forest in Sumatra: "The stem of every tree blinked with a pale greenish-white light which undulated also across the surface of the ground like moonlight coming and going behind the clouds, from a minute thread-like fungus invisible in the day-time to the unassisted eye; and here and there thick dumpy mushrooms displayed a sharp, clear dome of light, whose intensity never varied or changed till the break of day; long phosphorescent caterpillars and centipedes crawled out of every corner, leaving a trail of light behind them, while fire-flies darted about above like a lower firmament."[25]
Woods and Forests were to our ancestors the special scenes of enchantment.
The great Ash tree Yggdrasil bound together Heaven, Earth, and Hell. Its top reached to Heaven, its branches covered the Earth, and the roots penetrated into Hell. The three Normas or Fates sat under it, spinning the thread of life.
Of all the gods and goddesses of classical mythology or our own folk-lore, none were more fascinating than the Nature Spirits—Elves and Fairies, Neckans and Kelpies, Pixies and Ouphes, Mermaids, Undines, Water Spirits, and all the Elfin world
Which have their haunts in dale and piny mountain,
Or forests, by slow stream or tingling brook.
They come out, as we are told, especially on moonlight nights. But while evening thus clothes many a scene with poetry, forests are fairy land all day long.
Almost any wood contains many and many a spot well suited for Fairy feasts; where one might most expect to find Titania, resting, as once we are told,
She lay upon a bank, the favourite haunt
Of the Spring wind in its first sunshine hour,
For the luxuriant strawberry blossoms spread
Like a snow shower then, and violets
Bowed down their purple vases of perfume
About her pillow,—linked in a gay band
Floated fantastic shapes; these were her guards,
Her lithe and rainbow elves.