MY GARDEN ON AN ONION. 



75 



film was pretty in itself, and I was forced to admire it, although 

 I regretted the untimely extinction of my Polyactis. Shortly, 

 however, it turned a dingy brown and fell to the onion, crushing 

 the Polyactis under it. The conidia of the Polyactis germinated, 

 and sent up another crop of tiny trees; but they had not run 

 their little cycle of changes long, before the fine white lines ap- 

 peared among them. The pinkish film followed, and then, again, 

 film and Polyactis fell to the onion in a dirty -looking mass. The 

 Polyactis took a fresh part of the leaf -base ; the pink film followed 

 it. Polyactis tried the inner side of the leaf -base ; the film found 

 it even there. The Polyactis crept up the sprouts that had burst 

 through the scales ; the film still pursued it in fact, the Polyac- 

 tis could grow nowhere on this onion without being overrun by 

 the silvery threads. For days I watched the strife with naked 

 eye, magnifying glass, and mi- 

 croscope, and saw the Polyactis 

 gradually succumb and the on- 

 ion itself rot and blacken under 

 the repeated attacks of the pink- 

 dotted film. 



The microscope showed the 

 film to be a tangle of fine, trans- 

 parent liyphce, and the pink dots 

 little balls containing spores. 

 Very beautiful are these Bary- 

 eidamia spore-balls, changing, 

 as they mature, from pink to a 

 rich seal brown, and surround- 

 ed always with clear, scalloped 

 edges. In such profusion, also, 

 are they produced that hundreds 

 of them may be taken up at once 

 on the point of a needle. 



Though the most successful, 

 these were by no means all the 

 crops that my onion bore ; at FlG - s.-Polyactis over E by Baryeidamia 



PARASITICA. 



least three other minute fungi 

 struggled for existence, but could gain no headway against the 

 pink-filmed Baryeidamia. These, like the Penicillium, Polyactis, 

 and Baryeidamia itself, were all of a comparatively harmless 

 kind. They were merely scavengers, seeking their living on 

 parts of the onion already dead, and thriving on material that it 

 no longer had power to use. The onion, however, had nourished 

 at least one fungus of a very different nature. My microscope 

 showed me its clear, crescent-shaped conidia, and in the tissues of 

 the leaf -bases its hyphw were creeping from cell to cell, stealing 



