116 



Whether the explanations offered of the mode of entrance of the 

 Fungus within the fruit, and of the causes of its developing itself co- 

 temporaneously with injury, shall be deemed satisfactory or not, I 

 cannot say ; but I would utterly repudiate the doctrine of spontane- 

 ous generation, as affording any solution of the difficulty. Because I 

 cannot offer rational explanations of certain phenomena, shall I con- 

 tent myself with such an irrational and irreligious theory as that which 

 supposes that inert and unorganized atoms can endow themselves with 

 organization, the most complex, form, the most beautiful, adapta- 

 tion the most perfect ? — and further, that when they have done these 

 things, they can bestow upon themselves motion, and that vital breath 

 which God himself is declared to have breathed into the nostrils of 

 man ? Surely not ! 



Further Observations upon the decay of Fruits, more especially of 

 such as belong to the Apple and Peach tribes. By Arthur 

 Hill Hassall, Esq. 



Read November 16, 1842. 



In the paper which I had the honour of reading to the Microscopic 

 Society, at their last meeting, entitled ' An Explanation of the causes 

 of the rapid decay of many fruits, more especially of those of the 

 Apple and Peach tribes,' the question was raised, whether the Fungi, 

 the presence of which in decayed fruits the microscope reveals, were 

 to be regarded as a cause of the decay, or only an effect ; and it was 

 concluded, mainly from the circumstance of the decay attacking sound 

 fruit, in which the vital principle was strong, and which, therefore, 

 could not be the subjects of any known law of chemical decomposi- 

 tion, that they were not the effect, but a cause, the chief one, indeed, 

 of that peculiar form of decay to which fruits are liable, and which 

 so speedily brings about their entire destruction. 



Satisfactory as this explanation doubtless is, that the decay ori- 

 ginates in the growth of the Fungi, I now wish to bring forward still 

 more conclusive evidence of the influence exercised by the Fungi in 

 producing decay, and this, too, of a nature which all will at once be 

 able fully to appreciate, as it consists in the fact of the decay being 

 communicable, at will, to any fruits of the apple and peach kind, no 

 matter how strong their vital energies may be, by the simple act of 



