Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/122

103 obscure nook of the earth,—simple and pure is the delight they inspire. Not to the Poet's eye alone is their language addressed. The beautiful symbols are understood by the lowliest minds."

And although diverging somewhat from our path, the temptation of obtaining some good specimens of the Caterpillar Fungus tempts us up to Montpellier, and thence away to the Barrabool Hills where they abound;—this singular vegetable production springs from the neck of the dead larva of a moth, which, though when living, of a soft or fleshy character, when dead becomes perfectly hard and almost horny, so that it seems to form one substance with the parasite. This parasite is termed Sphceria, and species of it are dispersed through the Temperate Zones, growing generally upon decayed vegetable matter, and apparently immersed in the substance on which they are found, and so abundant that scarcely a decaying stick, leaf, or even grass stem, but presents some form or other of them; some too are met with on plants which are still living, but this may be looked upon as indicating a loss of vitality in the part of the plant so attacked. Hooker in his "Icones Plantarum" (Vol. 1, Tab. xi., published in 1837,) figures a New Zealand species (a), named after its discoverer, "Robertsii" and it is described as "black and cork like, the stipes or stem elongated, flexuose, simple or branched, the head acuminate, wormshaped." The native name of this plant is Areto or Hotito, and the residents in New Zealand call it the Bullrush Caterpillar, to which plant, more particularly in mature specimens in a state of fructification, it has some