380 CRYPTOGAMTA. 



cies, which the labours of Dr. Goodcnoiigh, Mr. 

 Woodward and Mr. Turner have reduced to system- 

 atic order. Still a more perfect combination of the 

 skill of the painter and the botanist i^ to be desired, 

 relative to the genus in question, and this is about to 

 be supplied by the Ilistoria Fucorum of the writer 

 last mentioned, and his friend Mr. W. J. Hooker. 



5. Fungi. Mushrooms. These cannot properly be 

 said to have anv herbaGfe. Their substance i^ fieshv. 

 generally of quick growth and short duration, differ- 

 ing in firmness, from a watery pulp to a leather} or 

 even woody texture. By some naturalists they have 

 been thought of an animal nature, chiefly because of 

 their foetid scent in decay, and because little white 

 bodies like eggs are found in them at that period. 

 But these are truly the eggs of flies, laid there by the 

 parent insect, and destined to produce a brood of 

 maggots, to feed on the decay ingyz^^i^wj-, as on a dead 

 carcase. Ellis's beautiful discoveries, relativ'e to co- 

 rals and their inhabiting polypes, led to the strange 

 analogical hypothesis that these insects formed the 

 fungus, which Munchausen and others have asserted. 

 Some have ^\\Qt\^^i fungi were composed of the sap 

 of corrujj^ted wood, transmuted into a new sort of be- 

 ing, an idea as unphilosophical as the former, and 

 unsupi)orted by any semblance of truth. 



Dryander, Schsefter and Hedwig have, on much 

 better grounds, asserted their vegetable nature, de- 

 tected thsir seeds, and in many cases explained their 

 parts of fructification. In fact, they propagate their 



