pasture mushroom, and, like it, its characters are so distinct that
there is hardly a possibility of making a mistake when its peculiarities
are once comprehended. It has more than one advantage
over the meadow mushroom in its extreme commonness, its profuse
growth, the length of the season in which it may be gathered, the
total absence of varietal forms, its adaptability for being dried and
preserved for years, and its persistent delicious taste. It is by many
esteemed as the best of all the edible fungi found in Great Britain.
Like the mushroom, it grows in short open pastures and amongst
the short grass of open roadsides; sometimes it appears on lawns,
but it never occurs in woods or in damp shady places. Its natural
habit is to grow in rings, and the grassy fairy-rings so frequent
amongst the short grass of downs and pastures in the spring are
generally caused by the nitrogenous manure applied to the soil
in the previous autumn by the decay of a circle of these fungi. Many
other fungi in addition to the fairy-ring champignon grow in circles,
so that this habit must merely be taken with its other characters in
cases of doubt.
Fig. 3.—The Fairy-ring Champignon (Marasmius oreades).
A glance at the illustration (fig. 3) will show how entirely the fairy-ring champignon differs from the mushroom. In the first place, it is about one-half the size of a mushroom, and whitish-buff in every part, the gills always retaining this colour and never becoming salmon-coloured, brown or black. The stem is solid and corky, much more solid than the flesh of the cap, and perfectly smooth, never being furnished with the slightest trace of a ring. The buff-gills are far apart (v), and in this they greatly differ from the somewhat crowded gills of the mushroom; the junction of the gills with the stem (w) also differs in character from the similar junction in the mushroom. The mushroom is a semi-deliquescent fungus which rapidly falls into putridity in decay, whilst the champignon dries up into a leathery substance in the sun, but speedily revives and takes its original form again after the first shower. To this character the fungus owes its generic name (Marasmius) as well as one of its most valuable qualities for the table, for examples may be gathered from June to November, and if carefully dried may be hung on strings for culinary purposes and preserved without deterioration for several years; indeed, many persons assert that the rich flavour of these fungi increases with years. Champignons are highly esteemed (and especially is this the case abroad) for adding a most delicious flavour to stews, soups and gravies.
A fungus which may carelessly be mistaken for the mushroom is M. peronatus, but this grows in woods amongst dead leaves, and has a hairy base to the stem and a somewhat acrid taste. Another is M. urens; this also generally grows in woods, but the gills are not nearly so deep, they soon become brownish, the stem is downy, and the taste is acrid. An Agaricus named A. dryophilus has sometimes been gathered in mistake for the champignon, but this too grows in woods where the champignon never grows; it has a hollow instead of a solid stem, gills crowded together instead of far apart, and flesh very tender and brittle instead of tough. A small esculent ally of the champignon, named M. scovodonius, is sometimes found in pastures in Great Britain; this is largely consumed on the Continent, where it is esteemed for its powerful flavour of garlic. In England, where garlic is not used to a large extent, this fungus is not sought for. Another small and common species, M. porreus, is pervaded with a garlic flavour to an equal extent with the last. A third species, M. alliaceus, is also strongly impregnated with the scent and taste of onions or garlic. Two species, M. impudicus and M. foetidus, are in all stages of growth highly fœtid. The curious little edible Agaricus esculentus, although placed under the sub-genus Collybia, is allied by its structure to Marasmius. It is a small bitter species common in upland pastures and fir plantations early in the season. Although not gathered for the table in England, it is greatly prized in some parts of the Continent.
MUSIC.—The Greek μουσική (sc. τέχνη), from which this word is derived, was used very widely to embrace all those arts over which the Nine Muses (Μοῦσαι) were held to preside. Contrasted with γυμναστική (gymnastic) it included those branches of education concerned with the development of the mind as opposed to the body. Thus such widely different arts and sciences as mathematics, astronomy, poetry and literature generally, and even reading and writing would all fall under μουσική, besides the singing and setting of lyric poetry. On the educational value of music in the formation of character the philosophers laid chief stress, and this biased their aesthetic analysis. Ἁρμονία (harmony), or ἁρμονική (sc. τεχνή), rather than μουσική, was the name given by the Greeks to the art of arranging sounds for the purpose of creating a definite aesthetic impression, with which this article deals.
I.—General Sketch
1. Introduction.—As a mature and independent art music is unknown except in the modern forms realized by Western civilization; ancient music, and the non-European music of the present day, being (with insignificant exceptions of a character which confirms the generalization) invariably an adjunct of poetry or dance, in so far as it is recognizable as an art at all. The modern art of music is in a unique position; for, while its language has been wholly created by art, this language is yet so perfectly organized as to be in itself natural; so that though the music of one age or style may be at first unintelligible to a listener who is accustomed to another style, and though the listener may help himself by acquiring information as to the characteristics and meaning of the new style, he will best learn to understand it by merely divesting his mind of prejudices and allowing the music to make itself intelligible by its own self-consistency. The understanding of music thus finally depends neither upon technical knowledge nor upon convention, but upon the listener’s immediate and familiar experience of, it; an experience which technical knowledge and custom can of course aid him to acquire more rapidly, as they strengthen his memory and enable him to fix impressions by naming them.
Beyond certain elementary facts of acoustics (see Sound), modern music shows no direct connexion with nature independently of art; indeed, it is already art that determines the selection of these elementary acoustic facts, just as in painting art determines the selection of those facts that come under the cognizance of optics.[1] In music, however, the purely acoustic principles are incomparably fewer and simpler than the optical principles of painting, and their artistic interaction transforms them into something no less remote from the laboratory experiments of acoustic science than from the unorganized sounds of nature. The result is that while the ordinary non-artistic experiences of sight afford so much material for plastic art that the vulgar conception of good painting is that it is deceptively like nature, the ordinary non-artistic experience of sound has so little in common with music that musical realism is, with rare though popular exceptions, generally regarded as an eccentricity.
This contrast between music and plastic art may be partly explained by the mental work undergone, during the earliest infancy both of the race and of the individual, in interpreting sensations of space. When a baby learns the shape of objects by taking them in his hands, and gradually advances to the discovery that his toes belong to him, he goes through an amount of work that is quite forgotten by the adult, and its complexity and difficulty has perhaps only been fully realized through the experience of persons who have been born blind but have acquired sight at a mature age by an operation. Such work gives the facts of normal adult vision an amount of organic principle that makes them admirable raw material for art. The power of distinguishing sensations of sound is associated with no such mental skill, and is no more complex than the power of distinguishing colours. On the other hand, sound is the principal medium by which most of the higher animals both express and excite emotion; and hence, though until
- ↑ Thus Chinese and Japanese art has attained high organization without the aid of a veracious perspective; while, on the other hand, its carefully formulated decorative principles, though not realistic, certainly rest on an optical and physiological basis. Again, many modern impressionists justify their methods by an appeal to phenomena of complementary colour which earlier artists possibly did not perceive and certainly did not select as artistic materials.
