And if we know better now-a-days than to believe these green circles to be fairy rings, we also know better than to give the slightest credence to certain authors of our own day who have gravely asserted that they are caused by electricity. We prefer the fairy agency theory, as the more poetical and picturesque of the two, for, as to the truth of either, why, the one is every whit as true as the other. Fairy rings, as we continue for convenience sake to call them, are, in truth, caused by a species of mushroom (Agaricus pratensis), the sporule dust or seed of which, having fallen on a spot suitable for its growth, instantly germinates, and constantly propagating itself by sending out a net-work of innumerable filaments and threads, forms the rich green rings so common everywhere this season. On the outer edge of this ring, and sometimes also, though more rarely, on the inner edge, grows the perfect plant, the fruit, the mushroom proper itself; and if some of our modern wiseacres had only had half an eye in their heads and the least particle of gumption, they could easily have gone to the fields and seen all this for themselves, instead of lazily theorising on the origin of the apparent mystery in their dressing-gowns and slippers by the fireside, and sagely ascribing the whole to the agency of electricity! There was a time, you may remember, when it was the fashion to ascribe everything that people didn't readily understand to electricity--very convenient certainly, but if you pushed these savans a little, and asked them what this electricity itself was, they were incontinently dumb, or, if they talked, they were bound to talk nonsense. We can forgive, and even admire, the fairy dance theory, for it is full of poetry and beauty, and in an age when people seldom troubled themselves to trace natural phenomena to their source, it was, upon the whole, a rather happy conjecture; if it was not the actual vrai, it had of vraisemblance about it enough to recommend it to the acceptance of the multitude. Grant but the existence of fairies, and the rest was easy of belief. The "electricity" theory, on the contrary, was unpardonable: it was not only false in fact, but it had nothing whatever about it to recommend it either to one's faith or fancy. Hardly more excusable than the electricity theorists themselves are those authors who tell us that the West received the first hint of the existence of fairies from the East at the time of the Crusades, and that almost all our fairy lore is traceable to the same source; the fact being, nevertheless, that Celt and Saxon, Scandinavian and Goth, Lap and Fin, had their "duergar," their "elfen," without number, such as dun-elfen, berg-elfen, munt-elfen, feld-elfen, wudu-elfen, sae-elfen, and waeter-elfen--elves, or spirits, of downs, hills, and mountains, of the fields, of the woods, of the sea, and of the rivers, streams, and solitary pools--fairies, in short, and a complete fairy