45 



FUNGI. 



H r^iiiaii ■ 



lUNGi are a class of the most lowly organised 

 plants. There is no differentiation amongst 

 them into root, stem and leaf, such as we are 

 accustomed to see in our common garden 

 plants, while a character which marks them 

 off from other plants, of almost equally low 

 organisation, is the absence of Chlorophyll. 

 This green colouring matter is used by the plants which possess it to 

 enable them to extract food material from the air. A Fungus, not 

 possessing it, cannot take its food from the same source, and so it 

 lives on material from which it can extract the food that it requires 

 for its existence. Some of the Fungi grow on decomposing vegetable 

 and animal matter, and take in chemical compounds formed during 

 the decomposition through numberless little threads, which occupy, 

 to a certain extent, the position of the roots of higher plants. 

 These threads spread in all directions through the decomposing 

 material and can be seen round the base of such a Fungus as the 

 Mushroom, if one carefully cuts into the earth beneath it. 



But though many Fungi grow on dead matter, others are found 

 on living organisms, the moulds which grow on ripe fruits being 

 cases of such a kind of Fungus. Taking a Mushroom as a good 

 example of a certain class of Fungus, we can easily distinguish a 

 stalk with a collar round it and a cap which consists of a white 

 upper part and bears on its under side a number of plates or gills, 

 which are pink or black in colour according to their age. If you 

 cut off the cap and leave it for a few hours on a piece of paper, 

 and then remove it, you will find the paper covered with a fine 

 brown dust. This, if magnified, is seen to be a mass of small oval 

 bodies, each of which is called a spore, and from which new 

 Mushrooms spring. If a young Mushroom is noticed, the outer 

 covering of the cap is seen to join the stem and afterwards to break, 

 leaving part attached to the stem as the collar. 



