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rings in the fields and prairies? One Sunday in August, as he wandered over the hills of Howth, Evans-Wentz met some local people with whom he discussed these old tales. After he had tea with the man and his daughter, they took him to a field close by to show him a "fairy-ring," and while he stood in the ring, they told Lt. him: Yes, the fairies do exist, and this is where they have often been seen dancing. The grass never gets high in the lines of the ring, for it is only the shortest and finest kind that grows there. In the middle, fairy-mushrooms grow in a circle, and the fairies use them to sit on(!). They are very little people, and are very fond of dancing and singing. They wear green coats, and sometimes red caps and red coats. On November 12, 1968, the Argentine press reported that near Necochea, 310 miles south of Buenos Aires, a civilian pilot had reported a strange pattern on the ground and investigated it with several military men. Walking to the spot, where a flying saucer was earlier alleged to have landed, they found a circle six yards in diameter where the earth was calcined. Inside this circle grew eight giant white mushrooms, one of them nearly three feet in diameter. In Santa Fe province, other extraordinary mushrooms have been discovered under similar circumstances. Another writer, reporting on Scandinavian legends, noted that elves are depicted there as beings with oversized heads, tiny legs, and long arms: They are responsible for the bright-green circles, called e/f-dans, that one sees on the lawns. Even nowadays, when a Danish farmer comes across such a ring at dawn, he says that the elves have come there during the night to dance. It is amusing to note that attempts have been made, in the early days of Rationalism, to explain fairy rings as electrical phenomena, a consequence of atmospheric effects. P. Marranzino, for example, quotes a little couple by Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of the English naturalist Charles Darwin, written in 1789: rings. There is a phenomenon, supposed to be electric, which is not yet accounted for; I mean the fairy rings, as they are called, so often seen on the grass. At times larger parts of prominences of clouds gradually sinking as they move along are discharged on the moister parts of the grassy plains. Now this knob or corner of a cloud in being attracted to the Earth will become nearly cylindrical, as loose wool would do when drawn out into a thread, and will strike the earth with a stream of electricity perhaps two to ten yards in diameter. Just the external part of the cylinder burns the grass. The formulation of this idea in terms of modern plasma physics will no doubt soon be provided by eager scholars. They would do well, however, to note the diameter of the cylinder mentioned by the elder Darwin: "two to ten yards" — the diameter of the average UFO. We have already noted several instances connecting unknown beings with the theft of agricultural products. Lavender plants, grapes, or potatoes seem to have been taken away with equal dexterity So from the dark clouds the playful lightning springs, Rivers the firm oak or prints the fairy And Erasmus Darwin adds: Angels or Devils?