2 THE FLOSAL WORLD AKD GARDEN GUIDE. 



spread source of mischief, the importance of wliicli has only lately been 

 fairly recognised, but v/hich has doubtless been in action even since the 

 creation, and to the destruction possibly of many a vast forest in olden 

 time, and we are certain, of many a good orchard in the present day. 

 This being the season in which any hints or cautions respecting planting 

 are doubly valuable and acceptable, we call attention to the fact, that 

 there are some varieties of fungi which flourish at a considerable depth 

 below the surface of the soil, and which choose for the groundwork of 

 their operations any fragment of half-rotten wood which may have been 

 buried by accident, or which may have decayed in the ground. We 

 have lately seen an example of the extent to which this devastating agent 

 will proceed if left unchecked for a few yeai's. An old fence in a garden 

 on the north side of London, where the soil is a deep moist loam of the 

 very best quality, had been allowed to fall to ruin. It had tottered from 

 the perpendicular, and leant over a border, weighed down with ivy of many 

 years' growth. An incoming tenant, determining to set the place in order, 

 had about two hundred feet of this fence cleared away, and a new one 

 erected in its stead. The border had in its day been liberally planted 

 with deciduous and evergreen trees and shrubs, including some Ameri- 

 cans. All these Avere in a hopeless state of delapidation, some quite dead, 

 the remainder so nearly dead as to be fit only for the fire. When the 

 old fence was removed, the cause of the death of these trees was readily 

 ascertained. The oak posts of the fence had rotted in the ground, and 

 had become invested with a thick coating of white threads, smelling 

 strongly of mushrooms. These were the mycelium or spawn of fungi, 

 which at first fed on the decaying wood, then took possession of the soil, 

 and, at last, travelled across the border till they reached the roots of the 

 trees, which they completely covered with an offensive slime of a bluish 

 white, and from the moment those threads began to take hold of the 

 roots, the trees began to lose their health and vigour. In that same gar- 

 den, several old apple and pear trees Avhich had not borne fruit for years, 

 were cut down, and the roots grubbed out, and there again the enemy 

 was found clothing the entire surface of the roots, from the bole down- 

 wards, with a coat of grey powder and white threads, and wherever a tree 

 was marked out for removal or destruction because of its sickly appearance, 

 a disturbance of the soil revealed its presence, extending from a few 

 inches below the surface to a depth of five or six feet. It Avas found 

 necessary, in order to eradicate this pest, to trench up the Avhole of the 

 ground, and pick out every fragment of rotten wood, and the whole of 

 the soil in the two hundred feet of border, had to be burnt, after which 

 process it was returned, and a liberal dressing of sharp sand and manure 

 dug in to fit it for cultivatio n. 



The botany of this subject is well worth the study of those who take 

 an interest in the growth and forms of cryptogamic vegetation ; and recent 

 inquiries and experiments by scientific men, have resulted in pretty clearly 

 unfolding the physiological principles on which this undergrowth of 

 mycelium proceeds. Whether the gardener may or may not choose to 

 explore this department of natural history into its most delicate and 

 beautiful of microscopic details, he cannot ignore the fact that dead wood 

 is often the originator of a plague which Avill surely destroy the best of 

 his trees and shrubs, and so poison the soil that nothing will thrive in it. 



