STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 51 



the animal and the inorganic world. They are the preparers of food for the r, 

 dom which could not exist without them. Animals are also oxygenators, they also dc- 

 compose organic matter by oxyg mating it. Fungi stand in a similar relation to the veg- 

 etable kingdom generally, as do animals, with tiii— difference, that they reduce both vege- 

 table and animal substances to inorganic matter, preparing them to serve again as food to 

 the vegetable kingdom. Whenever vegetable or animal cella are cast otr, they are dead 

 matter, and therefore useless. But nature in her wonderful economy has provided that 

 it should not remain useless, and the bumble toadstool becomes a mighty agent in reju- 

 venating the universe. It Is true, as Prof. Turner told us last night, " they act as the 

 rangers of nature." But let us not despise them, for they are also ministering angels 

 sent abroad over the whole earth, and upon the performance of their mission depends 

 the life of the vegetable and animal kingdom. 



Essential, vast and powerful as is their agency, mankind has paid no attention to 

 fungi, not even to arrange and classify them into genera and species, until to their 

 agency was traced some of the diseases that affect both animals aud vegetables. Then 

 it was that men set themselves about observing their operations. In the diseased 

 tissue they found a fungus. This was named and described, and published to the 

 world not only as a new discovery, but a new thing. The same fungus under different 

 conditions, showed a different development. Therefore a new generic and a specific 

 name for it was invented, and so on, until we have volumes tilled with these isolated 

 observations. This is all wrong. Disease in animals or plants is an abnormal condi- 

 tion. If fungi are present, in this abnormal condition, what authority have we for .say- 

 ing that they are the cause of it, much less that we can learn their true and distinc- 

 tive character there? Now whenever there is anything fermenting or rotting, there 

 is a fungus present. We ought first to ascertain the phenomena of normal rot, and 

 the fnngus that is present, before we undertake to determine those of the abnormal. 

 Yet this is precisely what has been done. Isolated observation on diseased tissue has 

 been made, and the result pu.blii.hed as a new discovery, without trying to trace its 

 relation to any thing previously known, much less to identify it as one of the meta- 

 morphoses in the cycle of changes t hat these fungi undergo before they return to their 

 original form. Hence the unfortunate and mortifying announcement in Germany a 

 few years ago, of the discovery of the cholera fungus, which has since been identified 

 and proved to be nothing more er less than the Oidium lacti-s, that sours milk, the most 

 common of all ferments and the universal rot of all animal substances. 



From the volumes written on fungi, we would infer that there were almost innumera- 

 ble kinds of them ; but the truth is, the genera are but very few In number. I will 

 name the most familiar : First in the list is the one souring milk, hence called Oidium 

 lactis. It is not only violent in action, but rapid in progress, and is dangerous when 

 developed within the stomach or intestines, occasioning violent colic pains and inflam- 

 mation. It rots rapidly most vegetable- consumed by man, such as cabbage, tomatoes, 

 and potatoes, and hence is the cause of cholera morbus. It is aiso the rot of swamps, 

 gutters, -ewer», cess pools, carrion, in short the mephitic rot of all vegetable and ani- 

 mal substances. It differs from all other fungi in this, that it will pass through the 

 florescent state and produce its sporangia under water as well as in air, while all the 

 others do so only In the atmosphere. This fungus ferments cheese, and hence, cheese 

 while undergoing fermentation is very unhealthy. It is strange that this violent fungus 

 is overcome and destroyed by the feeblest of all ferments, that of wine. When the 



