FOUND GROWING IN LIVING ANIMALS. 291 



My purpose will be sufficiently answered by alluding to the well-known fact, that 

 cryptogamic plants spring up on such portions of decayed animal or vegetable 

 matter as present certain conditions necessary for their germination. I shall endea- 

 vour to shew that the fungi found growing in living animals never spring from the 

 healthy textures, but from certain morbid products which appear to furnish the 

 conditions essential for their sustenance. It is also probable that these morbid 

 products are invariably of an albuminous nature, and that the constitutional dis- 

 order predisposing to their production, at least in the higher animals, is scrofula. 

 In man all the vegetations yet discovered have been found connected witli 

 the matter effused into the textures in scrofulous constitutions. The fungi found 

 by myself, for instance, growing in the tuberculous cavities of the lungs, and 

 those discovered by SCHONLEIN, and described by GRUBY, constituting scrofulous 

 eruptions on the skin, grew on a finely granular amorphous mass, which pre- 

 sented no evidence of organization. Chemical researches have shewn that this 

 form of tubercular matter is principally composed of albumen, which explains the 

 large proportion of this animal principle present in the crust of the Porrigo or Ti- 

 nea favosa, according to the analysis given by ALIBERT. The fungi found by M. 

 EUDES DESLONGCHAMPS growing on the membranous lining of the air-passages in 

 an eider-duck, sprung from an " albuminous layer" " forming the soil on which 

 they grew." The mould or mucor discovered by OWEN growing in the lungs of 

 the flamingo, occupied the same situation as those observed by myself in the 

 lungs of man, viz. the lining membrane of tubercular cavities. The fungi found by 

 MM. ROUSSEAU and SERRURIER in the parroquet, grew on a species of false mem- 

 brane. What the nature of this membrane was, is not stated, but it is distinctly 

 mentioned that the animal died of laryngeal and pulmonary phthisis. In pigeons, 

 also, the same authors describe it as commonly induced by exposure to cold and 

 moisture, circumstances well known to be the most common cause of scrofula 

 and of tubercular depositions. According to the observations of VALENTIN, the 

 parasitic confervse found growing on fish are connected with a diseased state of 

 the animal, and are induced by keeping them in narrow vessels and foul Avater. 

 The gold-fish was evidently unhealthy which furnished the vegetations which I 

 have myself described, and I have shewn that these were connected with a granu- 

 lar, inorganic, albuminous matter, identical with that found in the lungs of phthi- 

 sical individuals, and in the crusts of Porrigo favosa. The salamanders and frogs 

 in which confervse grew, as described by HANNOVER and STILLING, were decidedly 

 unhealthy, and induced by circumstances which must necessarily impair the vigour 

 of animal life, and induce a state of cachexia. Vegetations attach themselves to, 

 or grow on, insects generally when in a chrysalis state, that is, when the powers 

 of life are sluggish or dormant. When seen in these animals during the most 

 perfect period of their existence, they evidently laboured under disease and soon 

 perished. This was distinctly observed in the vegetable wasp of Guadaloupe by 



