The Farm Table. 



^2>7 



Every housewife who has seen mold on her bread, her jehy, in her 

 pickle jar, or possibly on shoes and books, will mistrust that the velvety, 

 dark-centered spots are of similar nature. Molds spread their cells over 

 the food supply, occasionally sending a few cells down into the substance, 

 and others upward. From the tops of the upright cells grow others and 

 in or on them are formed the thousands of dust-like specks called spores. 

 Each of these may start a new bed of mold. 



The infinitely tiny spores falling upon some soft substances as cheese 

 or bread will send their invisible lacy threads down into the substance, 

 wdiile on books, leather, wood, cloth, they may grow only over the surface 

 and may remain visible. 



The other spots in the dust-garden are colonies of bacteria. Each 

 spot shows where one plant or cell touched the jelly. This fed, and 



Fig. 169. — Another dust-garden. 



divided itself in the middle. These two repeated the process until per- 

 haps there were a hundred or more. Then a tiny pin-point speck became 

 visible. No one ever saw, with the naked eye, a bacterium or a mold 

 spore. 



A dust-garden is shown in Fig. 169 with soil exactly like that in Fig. 

 168, but the dust which planted it was thrown into the air by using a 

 feather duster. 



Dust- gar dens evcryivhere 



We will now transfer our attention to the dining-room and the 

 kitchen. The dust that is thrown into the air by a wrongly used, dry 

 broom, or by a feather duster, will grow nearly as well in our milk, apple- 



