14 



potatoes, hops, vines, silkworms, &c. To the 

 scientific botanist they offered an illustration of 

 the unity which pervaded all organised forms of 

 life. Thus, though so diverse in their charac- 

 ter, their elemental tissue was the same. While 

 among flowering plants the simple leaf was 

 differentiated into bracts, calyx, corolla, &c., 

 so, too, fungi were resolvable into delicate 

 threads, called mycelia, sometimes filamentous, 

 at others felted aiid consolidated into a leathery 

 Bubstance. Another inducement for their study 

 was the fact that many problems respecting 

 their form, propagation, and influence in dis- 

 eases were unsolved : and thus they opened to 

 the microscopical student a road to fame and 

 reputation. Fungi had been defined as hystero- 

 phytal, or epiphytal mycetals, deriving nourish- 

 ment by means of a mycelium from the matrix 

 on which they grow, and never producing from 

 their component threads green bodies resembling 

 chlorophyl. Some might object that the terms 

 were dry and uninviting : yet they gave an idea 

 of their true characters. Thus the hystero- 

 phytal grew on dead or dying matter, while the 

 epiphytal were true parasites, growing on and at 

 the expense of living matter. Two grand di- 

 visions, of a perfectly natural character, had 

 been devised, viz. : the Sporiferi, or those pro- 

 ducing bare or naked spores ; and Sporidiferi, 

 in which the sporidia were contained in sacks, 

 called asci. These, again, were subdivided into 

 six great orders, four of which belonged to the 

 sporiferi and two to the sporidiferi: Ilyphomi- 

 cetes — thread or filament fungi — in which a 

 thread-like filament was the predominating fea- 



