212 ROMANCE OF LOW LIFE AMONGST TLANTS. 



Agariciis olearius, which has been fully examined and 

 tested by M. Tulasne, who says, " I have had the 

 opportunity of observing that this agaric is really 

 phosphorescent of itself, and that it is not indebted 

 to any foreign production for the light it emits." 

 Like Delile, he considers that the fungus is only 

 phosphorescent up to the time when it ceases to 

 grow ; thus the light which it projects, one might 

 say, is a manifestation of its vegetation. 



" It is an important fact," writes Tulasne, " which 

 I can confirm, and which it is important to insist 

 upon, that the phosphorescence is not exclusively 

 confined to the hymenial surface. Numerous observa- 

 tions made by me prove that the whole of the sub- 

 stance of the fungus participates very frequently, if 

 not always, in the faculty of shining in the dark. 

 Among the first agarics which I examined, I found 

 many the stipe of which shed here and there a light 

 as brilliant as the hymenium, and led me to think 

 that it was due to the spores which had fallen on the 

 surface of the stipe. Therefore, being in the dark, 

 I scraped with my scalpel the luminous parts of the 

 stipe, but it did not sensibly diminish their bright- 

 ness ; then I split the stipe, bruised it, divided it into 

 small fragments, and I found that the whole of this 

 mass, even in its deepest parts, enjoyed in a similar 

 degree to its superficies, the property of light, I 

 found, besides, a phosphorescence quite as brilliant 

 in all the cap, for, having split it vertically in the 

 form of plates, I found that the trama, when bruised, 

 threw out a light equal to that of their fructiferous 

 surfaces, and there is really only the superior surface 



