Excerpt a Zoologica : — Vegetation upon Living Animals. 429 



What is most interesting in these efflorescences is^ that they 

 not only grow on the bodies of dead animals^ but may also be 

 transferred to those of living ones. If, for instance, a living 

 animal which was wounded in any part of its body happened 

 to be contiguous, it was also attacked by them, and the con- 

 ferva vegetated from the wound in luxuriance, deriving its 

 nourishment at the expense of the animal, which fell oiF per- 

 ceptibly in condition and sometimes died. Moreover, direct 

 attempts at inoculation proved successful ; for a small quan- 

 tity of conferva conveyed into a cuticular wound vegetated 

 abundantly, and after some time fell off together with a por- 

 tion of the skin. 



These experiments were made by Dr. Hanover, and were 

 subsequently confirmed byM. Stilling. They showthat we have 

 here to do with a true vegetable contagium, similar to that of 

 the Porrigo lupinosa and the Muscadina, but with this differ- 

 ence, that in the one case the air is the diffusing medium, while 

 in the other it is the water. 



The conferva itself has been called Achlya prolifera. 



Another contribution to the history of these parasitical ve- 

 getable formations was adduced by Dr. Hanover in Miill. Arch. 

 1842, p. 281, "o?^ Entophyta ujmn the mucous membranes of 

 the dead and living human body.'' 



The little plant here described has the greatest similarity 

 to the mucedinous fungus of the Porrigo lupinosa, since it 

 consists of the same simple or ramified tubes ; but it appears 

 only to increase by division ; as sporules, such as they occur 

 in Porr, lupinosa, were never observed. This fungus differs 

 frbm most of the parasitical plants that have hitherto been ob- 

 served, from its not growing upon the surface but in the in- 

 terior of the body, viz. upon the mucous membrane of the cavity 

 of the mouth and alimentary canals of man. Among seventy 

 bodies which had died of the most varied diseases it was found 

 in fourteen, most frequently after typhus abdominalis, where 

 Langenbeck had already observed something of a similar na- 

 ture. After the occurrence of this filamentoid fungus in the 

 dead body had been confirmed, it was likewise found in the 

 living ; it was met with in the various sedimentary deposits on 

 the tongue and lips in typhus^, in erysipelas,aud in the stomach 



that even specimens of this plant that had been collected twenty years ago 

 still exhibited the same motion of their sporules (Miill. Arch. 1842, p. 145). 

 The motion of the spermatozoa is in fact quite a similar phaenomenon, and 

 the view that they are independent living animals can scarcely be main- 

 tained any longer since their origin from cells has been repeatedly proved, 

 especially by R. Wagner and by M. Kolliker. 



* The tartar deposited in health about the teeth consists in great part of 

 a fine filamentous fungus, according to some authors ; but Prof. Mitscherlich 

 and M. Mandl, prove it to consist of an infusorium.— Ed. 



