Chapter VI. 

 The Lower Sorts of Fungi. 



Number of fungi in Minnesota. While there are nearly 200,- 

 000 known species of flowering plants in existence, there have 

 been described only about 50,000 species of fungi. Yet in Min- 

 nesota, while there are but 2,500 or 2,600 flowering-plants grow- 

 ing without cultivation there are probably not less than 3,000 

 fungi, so that the state furnishes a field for the development of a 

 greater comparative proportion of fungi than of flowering 

 plants. Like the mosses and liverworts, the fungi are believed 

 to have arisen from primitive algal types and students recognize 

 two principal series. The lower series known as the algal fungi, 

 the structure of which is more directly suggestive of algae, is 

 much poorer in forms than the higher series of true fungi in 

 w^hich all the peculiar fungal structures and characters have had 

 an opportunity to be unfolded. 



Black moulds. Of the algal fungi a very widely distributed 

 group is that of the moulds. Among these the black mould is 

 omnipresent, and easily cultivated. If a slice of bread be dipped 

 in water, placed in a saucer, a tumbler inverted over it and then 

 set in a warm place, perhaps behind the kitchen stove, in a few 

 days the tumbler will be filled with a white cloud of fungus 

 threads and presently little black, spherical spore-cases will arise 

 at various points on the fungus network. The white threads 

 are the vegetative plant-body of the mould ; the black knobs 

 (white when young), smaller than a pin-head, are the fruit-bod- 

 ies. The black color of each fruit-body is occasioned by the 

 presence, in a swollen cell, of some hundreds of little black 

 spores, which have developed by the division of the living con- 

 tents of their mother-cell or spore-case. When the spore-cases 

 are broken and the living powder is disseminated, it is caught 

 in air currents and is held suspended in the atmosphere to such 



