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51 
as in truffles and morels; and lastly, Physomycetes, as in 
those moulds which affect our fruits, jams, and other things 
which are said to ‘‘go”’ suddenly, and which were of great 
interest to the housewife, and afforded materials of great beauty for 
the microscopist; these are sporifera. The agaric which is 
found in the hymenomycetes class, consists of mycelium or 
spawn ; hymenophore, or stem and cap; hymenium, or gills. The 
hymenium is not a real membrane, but is the extension 
of mycelium and forms the gills in mushrooms, tubes in 
toadstools, veins in chantarelle, pores or veins in dry rot, and 
spines in the hydrum. The hymenomycetes consisted of several 
divisions, including agaricini, the latter divided into six groups, 
distinguished by colour of spores, viz., 1 white, 2 pink, 3 ferugin- 
ous, 4 brown, 5 purple, and 6 black. Dry rot used to be 
placed among the agaricini ; but-Berkeley has placed it among the 
polyporei. The mycelium was eomposed of filaments creeping in the 
substance of the wood, disorganizing it, feeding on its elements and 
leading to its decay, sometimes in the most rapid manner possible. 
- Dry rot, or merulius lachrymans, Dr. Carpenter remarked, was con- 
nected with a very important matter, of which they had heard a 
good deal lately. He recollected three or four years ago, a church 
near to Sutton was affected seriously before it was out of the con- 
tractor’s hands. St. Matthew’s Church was also affected in a similar 
manner by it, soon after the building was finished, and the Parish 
Church of St. John’s was found to be seriously injured from a 
similar cause, although its erection was superintended by the 
greatest architect of the day; whilst the Congregational Church in 
Dingwall-road showed that we were not restricted to the established 
churches for instances of its destructive effects. A friend of his 
recently built a large billiard room, but in the course of a few 
months it was found that the table was disappearing into 
the room below. The _floor had altogether gone with the 
dry rot before the year was out in which it had been 
erected. The subject of dry rot was very interesting, because 
it explained some of those changes which took place in the 
_ human body; he considered that a condition similar to dry rot could 
- exist in the human frame as well as in timber ; and although some 
great men held that it could not be, because they could not 
get spores of disease to grow when away from the juices of the 
body, he (Dr. Carpenter) made bold to say that, in so deciding, 
_ they were deciding against evidence, because they might 
with just as much justice decide that the spores of ordinary agarics 
which were before the meeting were not spores of a fungus, because 
they could not be made to germinate and grow fruit in their present 
state, unless planted in a suitable soil. ‘The spores of an ordinary 
mushroom could not be made to grow with any degree of 
