_Coral Fungi._--The coral fungi that I eat look like chunks of pinkish or cream white organ pipe coral. They are fleshy, soft, yet firm enough to keep their shape, and the whole mass is made up of tiny thread-or rod-like parts of many branches. There is a fine one which looks like a cauliflower though more yellow. I have found the pink and creamy ones on fallen and decayed tree trunks in deep, cool woods in midsummer. Others equally good grow in thin woods or open places. They vary in size from chunks as big as a walnut to those as big or bigger than your fist. They need careful cleansing under a faucet. Some cooks soak them first in cold water into which they put a little vinegar or lemon juice. They then fry in butter. Another way is to stew till tender in water with lemon juice in it. Then drain and dress with cream sauce. _Puff-balls._--What country child has not puffed the "smoke" from the hole in the top of the tough-skinned little brown balls they find in the fields in autumn? Children generally believe them to be deadly poison and call them "devil's snuff-boxes." Their life history is very like that of other fungi. The most of the year these flowerless and leafless plants spend underground. They spread in a tangle of fine threads all through the soil wherever they find decaying vegetable matter upon which to feed. When their time comes, little white balls push out and up from the threads. These come to the surface and we know them by their shapes and sizes as our different kinds of puff-balls, mushrooms, or other fungi. The puff-balls are white and look like fine cream cheese when they first appear. Their business is to ripen their spores, scatter them, and disappear. The brown smoke or dust of the ripe puff-ball is blown about by the wind and finds its way into the earth in time; each tiny spore or grain of dust can start a new mat of threads down underground. When you puff the devil's snuff-box you are doing the plant just the kindness it was waiting for. When a cow steps on a ripe giant puff-ball a great smoke goes up, and the breeze catches the dust. Some of the spores may be carried on the wind or on the cow's foot to far distant pastures, there to settle down and start a new puff-ball colony. It is just so with all the fungi. All the puff-balls are edible but one of the most eatable is _the giant_, which is found in August or September in pastures or other grassy places. When right to eat it is grayish on the outside and pure white clear through. In size this giant varies from six or eight inches through to two feet. Specimens of ten pounds' weight are not rare, and there is record of some twice that size. When yellow or brown inside, the giant is past eating.