that his most attractive feature should receive even this recognition.

Altogether he presented a notable figure, and one quite typical of his
profession, especially when armed with his staff of office, his crook.
He was inclined to superstitious beliefs, and told me when I noticed
the matted condition of the manes of some colts domiciled in a distant
set of buildings that he reckoned "Old P. G."--an ancient dame in a
neighbouring cottage with a reputation for witchcraft--"had been
a-ridin' of 'em on moonlight nights." This matted appearance of colts'
manes, which is only the natural result of their not being groomed or
combed when young and unbroken, was known in many country places as
"hag-ridden." Such superstitions are now nearly, if not quite,
extinct, but still linger in old place-names, for it was usual in
former times to attribute any uncommon or surprising physical
appearance to supernatural agency. Thus we have such names as "Devil's
Dyke," "Devil's Punchbowl," "Puck Pits," "Pokes-down" (Puck's Down),
and many others.

The fairy rings, too, which puzzled our ancestors, are explicable by a
natural process. The starting-point is a fungus, _Marasmius oreades_,
which in due course sheds its spores in a tiny circle around it; the
decay of the fungus supplies nitrogen to the grass, and renders it
dark green in colour. The circle expands, always outwards, more and
more fungi appearing every year; it does not return inwards because
the mineral constituents of the soil are exhausted by the growth of
the fungus and of the grass, under the stimulus of the abundant
nitrogen left by the former, so that the dark ring of grass extends
its diameter year by year.

In the _Tempest_ Shakespeare refers to the fairies: