ORDER VII. FUNGI. "To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, Converse with nature's charms, and see her stores unroll'd." BYRON. OBS.-The Fungi are distinguished from the Lichens by their want of a crust or frond independent of the organs of fructification; and from the Algae, by never vegetating under water, and by differences in habit and structure, which a little practice enables the student to seize and appreciate without difficulty and with tolerable certainty. The mushroom and the mould afford the most familiar examples of the class, which includes also the various vegetable parasites, whether solid or pulverulent, which sprout from decaying wood, or spot the leaves of phænogamous plants. In habit the Fungi vary infinitely, and in general they have little resemblance to the plants of any other order. Some resemble an umbrella, some a piece of honeycomb; others are cups in miniature; others again simulate a ball, a club or a mace, or assume the forms of the sea-corals; while many defy comparison with any familiar objects, and grow in figures peculiar to themselves. In texture they are corky or fleshy, soft and gela tinous, or formed merely of tubular filaments. A few of them are of less than ephemeral existence; others attain maturity slowly, and remain unchanged for a very long period; while the greater number, although surviving the day of their birth, are still of quick growth and short duration. Species of a green colour are very rare amongst them, and in these few it is merely superficial; but they exhibit all the other colours in every variety of shade, and the tints are often very brilliant. "In the coloured drawings of the more perfect plants," says Dr FLEMING, "the artist is sometimes too profuse in tints, and the figures exhibit a gaudy aspect; but in the colouring of figures of the fungi, he need be under little apprehension of committing excess. ture having withheld from this portion of her plants those flowers which form the chief beauties of the higher orders, and even the leaves with which they are clothed, has profusely scattered her colours over the whole surface of the mushrooms, ornamenting the cap with one colour, the gills with a second, and the stem with a third. Let but the lover of natural history free his mind from prejudice, and then examine the forms and colouring of the fungi, and he will be compelled to admit, that many of them rival in symmetry and splendour the rose and the lily, those gaudy ornaments of Flora." Na The seeds of fungi are produced either on the external surface or internally. They are exceedingly minute and multitudinous, generally globular and pellucid, either naked, or more commonly contained in capsules of various forms. They begin to vegetate and develope themselves when our trees and herbs assume the livery of decay-the "sere and yellow leaf;" and they appear in almost every possible variety of situation. The manner in which they are thus widely disseminated is one of the most curious and perplexing inquiries in vegetable physics. I cannot think that the doctrine of equivocal generation, entertained by the earlier writers, and of late revived from the slumber of at least a century, by some modern botanists, affords any admissible explanation of the phenomena. Its advocates dwell much and long upon some isolated experiments and facts, until, apparently, they forget that these facts are very few indeed, when compared with those from which has been deduced the law that every living being originates from an organized body produced by its like. That this is the ordinary mode of dissemination of the fungi even, cannot be denied; and were the facts which oppose its extension to every cryptogamous species more numerous than they are, yet it might be the safer course to leave their explanation to future inquiry, than to call in the aid of a supposititious agent. But the facts alluded to do not, properly speaking, stand in opposition to the usual doctrine of vegetable reproduction. Some plants, more particularly some fungi and algæ, appear under circumstances and in situations where, it is said, the presence of seeds is improbable or inconceivable; but the improbability may proceed from our inability to trace the secret operations of nature, or from limited investigations. To find facts inexplicable by a theory acknowledged to be true, is not strange or even uncommon, but it seems surpassing strange to suppose that atoms of unorganized matter can unite themselves with similar atoms so as to assume forms unvaried by differences, in time and place, and such an organization as admits the play of life and its usual signs, so that even these parentless things produce a seed, and can and do afterwards propagate their likes! The mushroom, for example, has been instanced as a very genuine production of equivocal generation, but we well know that mushrooms shed a copious seminal powder, and are often propagated by it. When, indeed, I ask myself what equivocal generation is, I can form no other conception of it than of something analogous to chemical affinity, which may build up fabrics as beautiful as are exhibited in mould, but which no one has ever confounded with the lowest of vegetable forms;—so wide is the interval which separates living from dead matter; and this difference the hypothesis fails to explain. Nor, perhaps, would I be much in error, were I to place equivocal generation among those causes which are purely figments of the mind;—which, like "great Comus,” may "inveigle and invite the unwary sense," and give us the possession of a fancied knowledge, to continue only until reason shall “unlock the clasping charm” of a name, and restore us to ignorance and truth. But while I receive unconditionally the doctrine of Harveyomnia ex ovo-I am not disposed to maintain that every thing described in our systems as fungi are disseminated in accord. ance with it. Many fungi appear to be merely morbid alterations in the structure of vegetable textures, or diseased growths, analogous, in some respects, to the tumours and ulcerations of the animal system; and we may, perhaps, form some idea of the manner in which they may originate, by studying the various galls and excrescences produced in plants by insects. We observe that the irritation caused by the deposition and evolution of the egg will produce growths of the most curious kind; and differences in the irritation too slight to be traced, will occasion very remarkable differences in the appearance of the growths. Thus in the oak-leaf one insect irritation produces a globular smooth ball; another a depressed circular tumour, covered with a hairy scarlet coat. The first is seated in the substance of the leaf, and cannot be removed without destroying the texture of the part; the other seems almost placed on the leaf, and can be detached with facility. Examples equally remarkable will occur to every one who has paid any attention to this curious subject; and the growths appear to be not less uniform and not less organized than many parasitical fungi. To suppose, therefore, that the latter may be the result of irritations and obstructions in the cellular parenchyma or in the circulating juices, seems not unreasonable, although the sources of the obstruction or irritation may be undiscoverable. * Fungi of a hard or corky texture. With a few exceptions, they are very small, sessile, mostly of a black colour, never white: they grow on wood and leaves generally when in a state of decay: their seeds are internal, immersed in a soft or pulpy parenchyma. + Seeds contained in slender crystalline tubes. 66. SPHÆRIA. Fungi-globular or flask-shaped horny capsules, naked or immersed in a corky or chared base, each opening by a pore in the summit. 67. DOTHIDEA. Fungi-wart or tubercle-like spots semi-immersed in leaves, cellular within; cells excavated in the mass, and without pores. 68. PHASCIDIUM. Fungi-solid roundish tubercles, opening with a torn stellated orifice; parasitical on leaves. 69. RHYTISMA. Fungi-circular swollen spots originating in the substance of leaves; surface obsoletely furrowed, opening at length by transverse or irregular flexuose clefts; internally solid, homogeneous. 70. HYSTERIUM. Fungi-solid oblong or linear sessile tubercles furrowed with a mesial cleft parallel to the longest diameter. ++ Seeds diffused in the interior, globular. 71. SCLEROTIUM. Fungi-solid globose or oblong tubercles without aperture or dehiscence; internally smooth and homogeneous. 72. XYLOMA. Fungi-circular plane spots or dots in leaves verging to decay, without orifice or cleft; internally solid, homogeneous. 73. CEUTHOSPORA. Fungi-depressed spots (black) in leaves, opening at last irregularly; seeds collected into an internal black nucleus. 74. ERYSIPHE. Fungi-minute spherical tubercles filled with globular seeds, and placed on a white filamentous cobweblike base; parasitical on living leaves. 75. RHIZOMORPHA. +++ Anomalous. Fungi-much branched, elongated, solid, ligneous, resembling the roots of shrubs: growing between the bark and wood of decayed trees. ** Fungi soft or gelatinous, homogeneous, sessile; seeds naked, diffused internally. On decayed wood and plants. 76. DACRYMYCES. Fungus sessile, rounded, gelatinous, smooth; internally filamentous, the filaments ascending with the seeds interspersed. Small, gregarious. Hab. decayed wood. 77. ILLOSPORIUM. Fungus soft, subgelatinous, entirely formed |