Year: 1876

OF vegetable hber, great advance has
been made quite recently, until it is
now understood that decay, Or rotting,
in vegetables, is never simple pro-
cess, but that it is always fastened OF
modified by other vegetable growths.
just as the great fir tree that falls in
our woods is soon covered by thick
growth of moss and then by young ce-
dars, hemlocks, or naples, according
to it's retroaction and the varying condi-
tons, so it is with all organic matter
on the track towards the morgan
ic kingdom. The process is sure to be
fastened and variously modified by
these minor growths, whose only means
of subsistence is through the decay of
other vegetable matter-this is the fun
gus family. And many fungi, or fun
guses, to use the English plural, which
I believe is allowable, subsist only as
they destroy vegetable tissue. The
potato-rot is caused by minute fun
gus, commonly said to be the perouspo-
ra intestans, which grows, increases and
multiplies solely upon the tissue of the
plant upon which it is parasite. Be-
fore describing this particular fungus
and the law of it's growth and develop
ment let us look at what has lately been
learned of the family of funguses in
general. This faulty Of cryptogamic
plants is exceedingly large, and has
many comparatively unknown branch
es. These plants, mostly minute,
many entirely microscopic, are known
(those that we see and know at ally un-
der the name of mushrooms, toadstools,
puff-balls, moulds, mildews, blights,
rusts, smuts, &c. They are found in
all parts of the globe, but in climate
such as ours, moist and not cold, attain
their greatest development and make
greatest ravages. Nothing Of vegeta-
BILE origin is free from them, and they
will grow on bare stones and on iron
lately red hot in the forge and out of
the blacking that you put on your boots
yesterday. Bread or cheese will pro-
duce perfect forest or these plants at
any time within forty-eight hours; they
grow on the human skin that is not
very regularly washed, and even the
househy is not sufficiently agile to es-
cape the sporendonema muscae. You
may see tomorrow in your own house
fly stuck to the window-pane, his alb
domen swelled and circled with white
rings and little cloud on the glass
behind him as though it wers the frost
of his last breath. That fly died by
this fungus and it's mycelium (roots,
you may say,) stuck him to the glass
and it's spores (seeds) discharged
against the glass produced the cloud,
while the white rings are belts of these
little white mushrooms. Silk dresses
would cost far less than they do but for
the silkworm fungus that destroys the
industrious spinner just as he begins his
task. The yeast plant, which is SO
closely connected with all forms of fer
mentation, is the mycelium of we'll
known fungus. Many diseases, and
among them some of the most fatal, are
now supposed to be more or less closely
connected with fungus growths, if not
absolutely caused by such growths.


These growths, one can hardly. say
plants they are so minute and so differ


ent from all that we are accustomed
to call by that name, are most of them
so minute, during at least one stage of
their development, that their study is
attended with great difficulty, and yet
patient Investigators have studied and
worked, with the aid of powerful micro
scopes, till a great mass of knowledge
has been secured from the vast field so
lately unknown, And one great point
that we may consider settled beyond
dispute for nearly the whole order and
by analogy for all, is that there is no
spontaneous generation here. This is
great advance, for few years ago al
plost any one would have deemed it
sufficient explanation of the mould that
arises on the top of your canned fruit
to say that it originated spontaneously.
But in the present state of our knowl-
edge of these growths few are left who
are bold enough to suggest the word
spontaneous as an explanation of fun
gus forest, however mysterious it's orr
gin may be seen. For the case stands
thus: No instance of single fungus
originating without some connection
with the parent plant of the same kind
either by budding division OF germ
cell (spore) has ever been proved, while
in all the forms that have been CAREFUL
ly studied, regular modes Of reproduc-
ton have been observed wherein the
law like producing like, has been as
clearly exemplifed as it is in the oak
tree. But this discovery is part of the
astonishing revelation concerning the
capacity of the atmosphere for bearing
these spores and germ cells of various
forms of microscopic life from place to
place and holding them by the million
ready to drop them at any moment in
any conceivable place where they may