22 



THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



All the fungi are beasts of prey, speak- 

 ing from a vegetable standpoint. The 

 germ of cholera, typhoid fever, and con- 

 sumption, diphtheria, ringworm, and the 

 disease of fungus foot, knovi^n in India, 

 present types of the fungi that live upon 

 the human body. Yeast lives upon the 

 flour and sugar in the process of bread 

 making. Moulds live upon bread and 

 cheese and preserves, while the higher 

 fungi which we call mushrooms or toad- 

 stools indiscriminately, draw their life in 

 a more harmless way, from decayed ani- 

 mal matter, or from manure, or dead 

 wood. 



The ancients were very superstitious 

 about the fungi, although there were a 

 number which they were accustomed to 

 eat. Their idea was that they were formed 

 during thunder showers, which was not 

 so far wrong after all, and that the gods 

 were directly responsible for them. 



There is something very wonderful in 

 the way the mushrooms spring up over 

 night. Apparently it is only necessary 

 for some genius of the woods to repeat a 

 mystic formula like that which raised 

 Aladdin's palace and the umbrellas ap- 

 pear already formed. The growth is how- 

 ever not so sudden after all, for long be- 

 fore any thing appears above ground the 

 fungi are being slowly formed under 

 ground. The mycelium which corre- 

 sponds to the root stem , and leaves of a 

 higher plant is slowly pushing its way 

 through the crevices of decaj^ed wood or 

 sucking the nitrogenous food out of old 

 and exposed manure. Here and there on 

 the masses of mycelium tubes which ap- 

 pear like bundles of tangled white 

 threads, and which the cultivators call 

 spawn, there will appear a small knob. 

 This is the incipient fruit body which 

 will afterwards become the umbrella. 



The illustration shows the method of 

 development in the common and edible 

 field mushroom. The small knobs are 



embryonic umbrellas which grow very 

 slowly. Little by little the cap or um- 

 brella is formed, but tightly compressed, 

 until in a small space everything is per- 

 fected. As long as the weatner remains 

 dry the umbrellas literally "lie low," but 

 as soon as the ground has become soaked 

 with a heavy rain, they absorb the mois- 

 ture as a sponge would and swell in a few 

 hours to their full size. It is a difficult 

 thing to actually watch the transforma- 

 tion. One observer watched all night to 

 time the growth of a fungus that was 

 nearly ripe, and just before dawn he was 

 rewarded by seeing it grow three inches 

 in twenty-five minutes. 



When the umbrella swells, the cover- 

 ing which has bound the cap down to the 

 stalk breaks and frees the cap so that it 

 can stretch out to its full size. Generally 

 at first the umbrella appears half open, 

 later it is apt to be almost flat, and when 

 the mushroom is quite old it has a ten- 

 dancy to turn inside out. The covering 

 originally over the mushroom is called 

 the veil, and when it leaves a tattered 

 fragment clinging to the stem after 

 breaking, the remains are known as the 



ring- 

 When the gills are finally spread out 



straight, the fungus is ripe and ready to 



shed its spores which grow all along their 



edges. 



Not all of the higher fungi have gills, 

 however, and one of the first points to be 

 noticed in classifying them is the char- 

 acter of the under surface. In other species 

 the gills become irregular ribs, and in 

 others they form short spines on which 

 the spores are borne. Still other kinds 

 have a smooth under surface dotted over 

 with minute pores out of which the spores 

 drop when the fungus is ripe. 



Other fungi such as the puff-balls can- 

 not scatter their spores by the simple 

 process of dropping them on the ground. 

 They are wholly surrounded by a skin, 



