284 ROMANCE OF LOW LIFE AMONGST PLANTS, 



interesting calculations on a minute species of 

 Coprinns, which he subjected to close examination, 

 but the figures he quotes are beyond human realiza- 

 tion. He says, "It will be found that instead of 

 thousands it really requires millions of individual 

 cells to build up one of these minute plants which 

 a breath destroys. The smallness and lightness 

 of one fungus is such that it requires 150 speci- 

 mens to weigh a grain, 72,000 to weigh an ounce 

 troy. In specimens of Coprinns radiatns there were 

 22,500,000 cells in its structure, irrespective of the 

 spores, which numbered about 3,200,000 more. If 

 all these cells and spores are only equivalent to 

 the hundred and fiftieth part of a grain, it follows 

 that in an ounce of fungus cells there must be 

 no less than one billion six hundred and twenty- 

 four thousand millions of these bodies, exclusive of 

 the spores. In a large mushroom the cells would 

 number hundreds of billions. Still more wonderful 

 is the fact that each individual cell is furnished with 

 a spark of life, contains water, protoplasm, and other 

 material, and is capable of growth and assimilation." 



Again he writes, concerning the rapidity of pro- 

 duction, that, " if the 22,500,000 cells which go to 

 make up one of these minute plants require fourteen 

 days for their production, it follows as a necessity 

 that the cells go on multiplying all the fortnight, 

 night and day, at the rate of I"II4 to the minute. 

 It takes about five hours for the spores to be gradu- 

 ally produced all over the hymenium — say from five 

 to ten o'clock in the morning, — and as there are 

 upwards of three millions of spores to each plant, 



