A later experience, which, while quite startling for a moment, was robbed of its full terrors by the reminiscence of the first. As in the former case, I was returning home at night through a dark, damp wood. I was skirting the border of a small runnel, when I was suddenly brought to a breathless standstill, apparently confronted by the glaring eyes of a panther, or perhaps a tiger; certainly no cat or fox or owl was possessed of eyes of such dimensions or wide interspace as those which glared at me from the dark shadow of yonder copse. But in a moment my quickened pulse had subsided, and I calmly returned the greenish phosphorescent gaze, observing that a singular accident had re-enforced the first illusion by a wonderful semblance to ears and outline of body, in keeping with the formidable eyes. In a moment I was attacking the foe, my hands stroking his rough barky forehead, and my fingers penetrating his eyes, which proved to be two holes in the bark of a fallen log, the farther side of which disclosed a brilliant, luminous patch which, as I invaded it with my hand, proved to be bare, exposed wood. Taking hold of the loose bark, a vigorous pull dislodged a great piece some three feet long, at the same time liberating a glare of greenish light from the exposed surface of the log, which was responded to in sympathy by the inner surface of the slab of bark in my hands, in all representing about six square feet of brilliant phosphorescence. I carried a fragment home, and upon inspecting it by lamp-light, found it white with thready mould, resembling the so-called "dry-rot" of mouldy timber--doubtless the mother of some well-known fungus, or "toadstool," which might have been discerned upon the log the following day had I chanced thither. Hawthorne in one of his books records a remarkable personal encounter with this weird fox-fire, and one which cost him dearly. He was on a journey by canal-boat, which had stopped _en route_ for a brief period at midnight. During the interval he had stepped ashore, and was decoyed into a neighboring wood by the bright glow, which proved to be a fallen tree ablaze with phosphorescence. In his surprise and interest he lost all account of time, and thus missed his boat, and was obliged to "foot it" for miles on the midnight tow-path, which he was enabled to do by the aid of a big brand of the tree which he used as a flambeau. Almost any damp wood, especially after a rain, is likely to disclose its fox-fire, but it occasionally appears under circumstances where we little expect it. A few weeks since, having occasion to go to my refrigerator after dark, I noticed a brilliant glowing object upon the floor beneath it, which I found upon inspection to be merely a piece of damp bread. Can it be that the yeast fungus too may give off effulgence with its carbonic acid at its whim? or was the light traceable to the perceptible odor of lobster with which it had evidently been previously in contact?