" 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:
"... That
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites."
John carried a magic bottle of caustic liniment for application to the
feet of sheep affected with the complaint called "foot-rot." The cause
of this troublesome disease is excessive development of the walls of
the hoof, owing to the animals grazing exclusively on wet pasture, the
surface of which is too soft to keep them worn down; the walls
gradually double over and collect wet mud, which causes inflammation.
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