Miscellaneous, 229 



Entophytes. — Cryptogamous Plants developed on the internal surface 



of the air-cells of an Eider Duck (Anas mollissima) whilst alive. 



From a letter of M. E. Deslongchamps to M. V. Audouin (Comptes 



Rendus, 1841, June 14). 



The growth of Cryptogamous vegetables upon living animals has 

 been placed beyond doubt by the researches of MM. Audouin and 

 Bassi on the disease of Silk- worms called Muscardine, and which 

 those naturalists have shown to be attributable to the metamorphosis 

 of the fatty tissue of the insect into the radicle or thallus of a new 

 cryptogamic plant, which M. Audouin has named Botrytis bassiana. 

 Some analogous facts have since then been collected*. M. Deslong- 

 champs had occasion to open an Eider Duck, which having been taken 

 by some fishermen in nets placed on the coast of the Channel, was 

 in a certain degree tamed, and lived some months in a poultry-yard 

 in company with domestic ducks. It died after having for near a 

 month appeared to suffer greatly from an increasing difficulty of 

 breathing. M. Deslongchamps found the air-cells lined within by 

 large patches of mould. Those of the left side exhibited mould of 

 long standing and in full maturity, for the sporules were fully deve- 

 loped, of a deep dull green, and united in capitula supported upon 

 straight filaments. In those of the right side the mould appeared 

 recent, and without a green tint. They appeared under the micro- 

 scope as transparent filaments, not articulated, little or not at all 

 branched, forming a felting which appeared more compact the nearer 

 they were to the false albuminous membrane which served to support 

 them, and where their diameter was exceedingly small. A great 

 quantity of minute globular or oval vesicles appeared everywhere in 

 this felted mass, of the same diameter as that of the filaments, and 

 which are doubtless the sporules. They were sometimes white, 

 sometimes of an ashy greenish colour. In the mould-spots of the 

 longest standing were some erect filaments, isolated from the felt, 

 some of them supporting at their extremity a rounded agglomeration 

 of greenish sporules, others terminated by a flat margined disc, which 

 appeared to be the state of the filament after the fall of the sporules. 



It seems that this fact of the presence of Moulds in the air-cells 

 of a bird, satisfactorily proved as it appears to be by the observations 

 of M. Deslongchamps, must often occur in domestic poultry that live 

 in places where these vegetable productions are abundant, and de- 

 vour bodies that are covered with them, and whose respiratory or- 

 gans must often be exposed to the contact of sporules suspended in 

 the air. But it is very possible, as the author himself remarks, that 

 the phenomenon is less rare than it appears to be ; and that if it has 

 escaped observation till now, it has arisen from the circumstance that 

 in general no interest is taken in investigating the cause of the death 

 of domestic fowls, and that it will probably be by chance if a similar 

 case to that discovered by M. Deslongchamps should be met with. 



The above is the abstract given in the ' Bibliotheque Universelle ' 

 of M. Deslongchamps's letter in the * Comptes Rendus,' a transla- 



* See the notice of fungi on insects in our present Number, p. 217. 



