26 



amount of moisture, the timbers have been made to grow some curr 

 ous crops. Some of the fungi in the old chambers are several feet in 

 height, and, being snow white, resemble sheeted ghosts. In places 

 are what at a little distance appear to be white owls, and there are 

 representations of goats with long beards, all as white as though 

 carved in the purest marble. The rank fungus growth has almost 

 closed some of the drifts. The fungi are of almost every imaginable 

 variety. Some kinds hang down from the timbers like great bunches 

 of snow-white hair and others are great pulpy masses. These last 

 generally rise from the rock forming the floor of the drifts and seem 

 to have grown from something dropped or spilled on the ground at 

 the time work was in progress years ago. These growths have in 

 several places raised from the ground rocks weighing from ten to 

 fifty and even one hundred pounds. Some of the rocks have thus 

 been lifted more than three feet. In the higher levels, where the air 

 is comparatively dry, the fungi are less massive in structure than be- 

 low and are much firmer in texture. Some resemble ram*s horns, as 

 they grow in a spiral or twisted shape, while others, four or five feet 

 in length and about the thickness of a broom handle, hang from the 

 cap-timbers like so many snakes suspended by the tails. One kind, 

 after sending out a stem of the thickness of a pencil to the length 

 of a foot or two, appears to blossom; at least it produces at the end a 

 bulbous mass that has some resemblance to a flower.^ In all the in- 

 finite variety of these underground fungi it is somewhat strange that 

 not one was seen at all like those growing upon the surface in the 

 light of day. Nothing in the nature of toadstools or mushrooms w^as 

 found." - ^ , 



The fantastic forms assumed by the higher fungi when growing 

 under abnormal conditions of light, heat and moisture, like those 

 above-mentioned, are certainly very curious, and have been the sub- 

 ject of frequent comment. A work descriptive of some of these sin- 

 gular productions found growing in similar situations in Europe was 

 published by George Hoffman in i8ii, under the title of ** Vegeta- 

 bllia in Hercyniae subterraneis Collectae/' In all these instances 

 the metamorphosis of the fungus remains incomplete, and, in many 

 cases, the plant (to use the words of Fries*) "preserves its mycelium 

 nature, its thwarted growth being limited to a monstrous modification 

 of this mycelium," or to a sort of exuberance which is opposed to the 

 formation of fruit-bearing organs; just as a too luxuriant vegetation 

 often opposes an obstacle to the flowering or fruiting of phaenogams. 

 An example of one of these imperfectly-developed fungi was exhibit- 

 ed by Mr. Fairchild at the January meeting of the Torrey Club. 

 This specimen, w^hich, judging from its texture, color and polished 

 surface was Polyporus lucidus^ Fr., was obtained from a coal mine in 

 Pennsylvania. It was an elongated growth, about two feet in length 

 and two inches in diameter, consisting of a succession of swellings 

 and appearing as if the fungus had made an attempt at each of these 

 points to produce a pileus. 



Olio r op h yll in the Epidermis of Leaves, — In a paper contributed 

 to the Scientific Proceedings of the Vienna Academy, Herr A. Stohr, 



'Annales des Sciences Naiitrelles, i860, p. 24. 



