292 ROMANCE OF LOW LIFE AMONGST PLANTS. 



phenomenon, in the following manner. " In the hot 

 days of July, 1853, provisions which were cooked in the 

 evening were in some cases the next morning covered 

 with this production. The only instance of similarly 

 rapid development is that of yeast globules, and it is 

 there probably that we must look for the true solution 

 of the question as to its real nature." And again, he 

 writes, " The rapidity with which it spreads over 

 meat, boiled vegetables, or even decaying agarics, 

 is quite astonishing, making them appear as if spotted 

 with arterial blood ; and what increases the illusion 

 is that there are little detached specks, exactly as if 

 they had been squirted in jets from a small artery. 

 The particles of which the substance is composed 

 have an active molecular motion, but the morphosis 

 of the production has not yet been properly ob- 

 served, and till that is the case it will be impossible 

 to assign its place rightly in the vegetable world. 

 [This has since been determined.] Its resemblance 

 to the gelatinous specks which occur on mouldy 

 paste or raw meat in an incipient state of decom- 

 position satisfy me that it is not properly an alga." ^ 

 Another observer says, " I observed at table the 

 under surface of a half-round of salt beef, cooked the 

 day before, to be specked with several bright carmine- 

 coloured spots, as if the dish in which the meat was 

 placed had contained minute portions of red-currant 

 jelly. On examination the next day, the spots had 

 spread into patches of a vivid carmine-red stratum of 

 two or more inches in length. With a simple lens 

 the plant appears to consist of a gelatinous sub- 



' Berkeley, " Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany," p. 114. 



