"And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing,
Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring;
The expressure that it bears, green let it be,
More fertile-fresh than all the field to see."
Fungi, toadstools, mushrooms, and so forth, are fructifications only; the vegetative part of the plants permeates the soil, feeds on its organic matter, and spreads almost equally, we may assume, in all directions from the point of starting. When now this vegetative growth has accumulated energy to form fruit, the sporocarps or mushrooms rise all around at the limits of activity; hence, in a circle.
The fungi cut a small figure in Shakespeare—i. e., considering their numbers and almost omnipresence. But we must remember that they were at that time studied by few, their significance and interest little suspected. They formed part of the realm of the world unseen; they came and went at the instance of powers unknown, mostly personified, imaginary, a misty population, the thought of which kept for long ages the childhood of our race in terror. Shakespeare saw the forms of unstudied plants, everything visible to the naked eye, and really omitted very little. He speaks of mosses—the lichens were included with them—chiefly as indicative of age in the object in which they rest:
"Under an oak, whose boughs were mossed with age
And high top bald with dry antiquity."
Then again he simply touches them, but in such a way as to reveal his full appreciation of their beauty, as in Cymbeline, iv, 2. For the decoration of Imogen's grave the ruddock would bring flowers—
"... bring thee all this;
Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none,
To winter-ground thy corse."
The "furred moss" to "winter-ground thy corse" is exquisite.
Ferns, though so much larger, so handsome, and in our day so all-attractive, failed generally to impress our fathers.
Butler, writing in 1670, has this to say: