BERKELEY, ADDRESS AT NORWICH. 235 



safe way of ascertaining what really originates from such 

 bodies as those Avhich he terms micrococci, or the larger ones 

 commonly called yeast globides, is to isolate one or two in a 

 closed cell so constructed that a pellicle of air, if I may so 

 term it, surrounds the globule of fluid containing the bodies 

 in question, into which they may send out their proper fruit 

 ■ — a method which "was successful in the case of yeast, which 

 consists of more than one fungus, and of the little Sclerotium, 

 like grains of gunpowder, which is so common on onions. 

 Any one who follows the growth of moulds on moist sub- 

 stances, and at different depths, as paste of wheat or rice 

 flour, will see that immberless different modifications are as- 

 sumed in different parts of the matrix, without, however, a 

 perfect identification with fungi of other genera. Some of 

 these will be seen in the figures I have given in the ' Intel- 

 lectual Observer,' Nov., 1862, and ' Journal of Linnean So- 

 ciety,' vol. viii. No. 31, of different forms assumed by the 

 moulds to which that formidable disease, the fungus foot of 

 India, owes its origin. This is quite a different order of facts, 

 from the several conditions assumed by the conidiiferous 

 state of some of the vesiculiferous moulds. As, for example, 

 Botrytis Jonesii, which has been ascertained to be a coni- 

 diiferous state of Mucor mucedo, wdiile two forms of fruit 

 occur of the same mould in what is called Ascophora elegans, 

 or the still more marvellous modification which some of the 

 Mucors undergo when groAvn in Avater, as evinced by some 

 of the Sajorolegnise, the connection of which was indicated by 

 Cams some fifty years ago, but which has never been fully 

 investigated. 



When Hallier intimates that he has raised from cholera 

 evacuations such a parasite as Urocystis occulta, he should 

 have been content with stating that a form of fructification 

 occurred resembling, but not identical with, that fungus. 

 Indeed, a comparison with authentic specimens of that 

 species, published by Rabenhorst, under the generic name 

 of Ustilago, shows that it is something very different, and 

 yet the notion of cholera being derived from some parasite on 

 the rice plant rests very much on the occurrence of this 

 form. But even supposing that some Urocystis (or Poly- 

 cystis, as the genus is more commonly named) was produced 

 from cholera evacuations, there is not a particle of evidence 

 to connect this with the rice plant. In the enormous collec- 

 tions transmitted by Dr. Curtis from the Southern United 

 States, amounting to 7000 specimens, there is not a single 

 s])ecimen of rice with any endophytic fungus, and it is the same 

 with collections from the East. Mr. Thwaites has made 



VOL. VIII. NEW SER. S 



