TWENTIETH ANNUAL MEETING. 83 



stems, leaves, and as finally developing flowers and fruits. While the 

 fungi have most of these, from their very nature others are lacking. 



These cryj)togams obtain their food from the tissues of other plants,, or 

 from animals, either alive or dead. When the food is procured from 

 decaying matter, they are said to be saprophytes. In this group of plants 

 are the moulds, puff balls and toadstools. Others draw their nourishment 

 from the cells of living plants, and are known as parasites. Many fungi 

 cannot be strictly classed with either group, as they attack weak but living 

 organisms, and, having killed them, feed on the decaying substance. 



These plants vary in size from such minute forms as can only be seen 

 with a microscope with a magnifying power of three thousand diameters, 

 to the giant mushrooms and puffballs. The differences in their structure 

 and methods of reproduction are nearly as great. 



As these plants take up their food from the cells of other plants, they 

 have little or no need of roots. In some cases they absorb their nourish- 

 ment through their body walls, and in others they develop short, sucker- 

 like organs which penetrate the cells of their hosts, and there take up 

 nutriment for the plant, from the juices of their hosts, thus serving as 

 roots for the fungus. 



From the fact that this food has already been transformed, by the leaves 

 of the host plant, into organic compounds, the fungi themselves have no 

 need of leaves; and Nature, ever frugal, has not provided such useless 

 appendages. 



While the great mass of our common plants bear flowers varying in size, 

 and more or less conspicuous in color, the fungi, owing to the fact that 

 their reproductive organs are very small and- inconspicuous, were by the 

 earlier botanists believed to be without flowers, and were known as 

 cryptogams. 



According to most of the old classifications, the fungi included such 

 cellular cryptogams as contained no chlorophyl or green coloring matter, 

 while the forms that contained chlorophyl were called algce. 



The plant body of the fungi consists of a minute, generally threadlike, 

 cellular structure, which absorbs food, grows, and finally, having attained 

 sufficient size and strength, reproduces itself by some one of its different 

 methods. 



The lowest fungi include what are commonly known as Slime moulds 

 ( My xomycetes . ) 



