CHAPTER II.
N ATU EE OE E U NG I.
H aving given some general notions of the objects of which
it is proposed to render an account in this volume, I proceed
to such considerations as to their nature, inode of growth,
propagation, uses, properties, distribution, and structure, as
may come within the scope of an essentially popular treatise,
and so far as they can be explained without entering into
abstruse discussions, which require a considerable portion of
previous knowledge.
The most prominent question which arises naturally may
he stated as follows :—Are these productions members of the
Vegetable Kingdom equally with the leaf-bearing plants with
which we are all so familiar ; are the species as truly species
as those which we meet with amongst them, or are Fungi
mere creatures of accident, without any stability of character,
and incapable of any rational arrangement ?
Taking Fungi as a whole, there is not a shadow of doubt
as to their being true vegetables. Discussions, indeed, once
took place in consequence of erroneous observations respecting
some supposed spontaneous motion in their reproductive
bodies, as seen under the microscope, as to whether they
of corals; but it is now perfectly certain that suoh notions
were ill-founded, and that these bodies agree in the main
principles of growth and structure with other vegetables. In
several species the complete progress from the minute spore
to the perfect plant has been traced step by step, till the
circle has been complete, and the new spore ready again for
reproduction. In one group alone, as stated above (p. 13),
doubts exist as to the real nature of the objects it contains,
because the general mass does not usually consist of real filaments
or cells, and the substance of which they are composed
is of a different chemical nature from that which forms the
framework of all known vegetables.* Ultimately, however,
true cells are always produced, and in one genus spiral vessels;
and both Mr. Broome and myself have in certain genera observed
distinct sacs growing from the fundamental framework
and not from the mere slimy mass which it encloses, in which
the spores are developed, and sometimes from a specific point,
as in the higher Fungi (Plate 1, fig. 6), the free portion of the
spore being rough with granules, while the inner portion, from
its contact with other spores, is smooth.f Besides, in Lyco-
gala terrestris there is as distinct a fibrillose spawn penetrating
the soil as in any Lycoperdon (see Corda, fasc. 6, t. 2,
fig. 37; and text, p. 15). Fries, moreover, in a letter received
while writing this, calls my attention to the early stage of
the fructiferous cells in the genus Polysaccum, and to the
amorphous, unctuous, semiliquid state of young Polyporus
Schweinitzii, resembling closely that of an infant. Mthalium.
Though, however, I have myself little doubt as to these productions
being vegetables, as well as other Fungi, and I am
* I t is something like the “ sarcode” of Dujardm, and not “ celluloso.”
t Exac% as in tho achenia of many Composite, as, for example, in those of