! )
the ash and walnut, which are commonly called Sapballs, or
the hard corky kinds, one of which supjilies the Amadou of
commerce ; but there is no general conception that the multitudes
of parasites which grow on dead and living plants, frequently
inducing disease or decay, the mould which runs over
our fruit and provisions, or the yeast of beer and mother of
vinegar, are closely allied productions ; if, indeed, the very
existence of some amongst them is recognized at all. We arc
obliged, therefore, to have recourse to the Latin language
for a general word to comprehend the whole tribe, which is
denominated Fungi. An objection, indeed, has been raised
to the term Fungology, which indicates a knowledge of the
whole tribe, as composed at the same time of a Greek and
Latin word. The word is however like many other spurious
words very geucrijlly received ; and if the objection should
be considered insuperable, we have but to substitute that of
Mycology, which is at once correct in etymology and comprehensive
enough to include all we wish. The word Fungus
may however in any case be retained as expressing these plants
in common parlance, only we must take care, if we do not
use the more English-looking word Fungal, not to speak, as
is too frequently the case, of a Fungi,* which is at once grating
to the ear, and utterly intolerable. I f Fungus be considered
as an English word, as it is used indeed by some of
our older authors, the plural will be Funguses ; hut there is
then something unpleasing in the sound, and the term Fungi
is certainly to he preferred.f
* As, for example, in Phillips’s Prize Essay on tho Potato Murrain, Journ.
o f Boyal Agricultural Society, vol. vii. p. 309.
t The French word Cliamplgnon was originally scarcely o f wider siguillca-
tion than our word Mushroom, though now classical in the sense of Fungi generally.
The German word FiJz (a corruption o f Boletus) is used to denote
the softer kinds, while Schiomnm generally denotes suoh Fungi as Polypori.
What then, generally speaking, are the plants comprehended
under this denomination? Now it is very difficult to give a strict
definition which will comprise every individual genus and species
of the whole group. I t would lead me into discussions
far too deep at present, to enter into the reasons of this difficulty
; nor could they he understood without some previous
knowledge of the neighbouring tribes of Lichens and Algæ,
which I am not at liberty to assume,* or indeed of the intimate
relations which exist generally between contiguous groups
of organized beings, insomuch that it is often extremely difficult
to distinguish even a plant from an animal. I t is principally
amongst microscopical objects that such perplexities
occur, though a few cases of difficulty arise where the true
position of a plant cannot at once he obtained from the mere
habit, without attention to the nature of the fruit.f
Without any strict definition then at present, I shall proceed
to call attention to a few of the various plants comprised
in the study of Mycology, from which something like a general
notion of the subject-matter may be gathered.
I f we take the common Mushroom (Plate 10, fig. 2) as our
point of departure, we have the type of an enormous group,
characterized by a hat or bonnet-shaped receptacle {pileus),
supported by a stem, and furnished beneath with a number
of gill-like plates {lamellæ), which deposit, when placed
on paper, a vast quantity of dust-like bodies, to which, though
reproductive, the name of Spores (Plate 1, fig. 1. a.) has been
given, to distinguish them from seeds which contain an embryo,
while these consist of a two-ooated cell, without the slightest
trace of an embryo. These spores are of different colours in
* The whole question is discussed in Berkeley’s ‘ Introduction to Cryptogamie
Botany.’
t As in the gelatinous matter so common on gravel walks after rain, called
Nostoc, which lias the habit at once o f a Lichen, Alga, or Fungus.
B 2