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THE FUNGI OF CHARCOAL BEDS. 



By Mr. PHILLIPS. 



Throughout the vegetable world there are few things more remarkable 

 than the curious habitats of fungi. In no other class of plants do we find so 

 varied a choice of material on which to grow, or so wide a geographical range 

 through which to flourish. The mere enumeration of the various substances 

 they live upon would occupy the evening and would include the simplest as 

 well as the most highly organised bodies. They inhalut nearly every plant 

 known to botanists from the humble moss to the giant oak, both in its living 

 and decaying state ; in one case seating themselves on the leaf, in another on 

 the stem, and in a third on the roots. Six hundred genera of plants to say 

 nothing of species are enumerated by Mon. Roumegufene as the victims of 

 parasitic fungi, and this list is far from complete. They do not confine them- 

 selves to vegetable substances, for, as some one has happily said. " they are 

 carnivorous in their tastes ;" they fix themselves on horn, leather, hair, un- 

 dressed hides, and on a considerable number of animal tissues, in some cases 

 even before vitality has forsaken those tissues, and hence many of the most 

 fatal diseases to which " flesh is heir " have been regarded as arising from 

 these parasites. Nearly every kind of food used by man is subject to their 

 growth as well as a variety of pharmaceutical compounds and jioisonous mix- 

 tures. Even the hard surface of minerals is not proof against their inva- 

 sion, for they have been known to grow on iron and glass. Their range of 

 situation is no less remarkable. They enter into our houses and find a lodge- 

 ment in every room — the library, the wardrobe, the cupboard, the cellar. 

 They thrust themselves into notice in our best kept gardens ; they spread 

 themselves over the most highly cultivated farms ; they develope in the depths 

 of the deepest mines ; and are observed throughout all elevations of the 

 earth's surface up to 18,000 feet above the level of the sea. Such in a few 

 words is the broad area over which these strange plants extend themselves. 

 There are, however, certain i^articular spots and materials which are more 

 frequented by their presence than others, where they appear to find some 

 special food they most prize. Quoting from the list just referred to, I find on 

 the beech (Fagus sylvatica) as many as 220 species have a habitat, on the 

 oak (Quercus robur) 290 species, and even on those minute plants, mosses, 

 there are said to grow 45 species, Amongst animal substances there are 

 given, as found on various materials derived from our domestic bull (Bos 

 Taurus) 57 species, on insects 35 species, and on birds 9 species. Although 

 we are not able to jiresent a long list as inhabiting charcoal beds and burnt 

 ground, we claim for such places the character of being favourable spots on 

 which some interesting plants are discovered. For a long time it has been 



