XIIL] ABOUT FUNGI. 195 
country schools might instruct the village children on 
the subject? Mr. Worthington G. Smith has pub- 
lished, in two sheets, coloured figures of the most 
common edible and poisonous fungi, which deserve 
a place upon the walls of every village school and 
club. 
With reference to the habitats of fungi—they are 
truly ubiquitous. “We need not travel from home 
for examples: the unwelcome dry-rot may have com- 
mitted its ravages beneath our kitchen floor, or the 
walls of our cellars, and our casks or bottles of wine 
may be infected with numbers of this ubiquitous 
race. Can we find no morsel of bread or cheese 
upon which a mould is flourishing ? No towel or other 
article of household linen presenting traces of mildew ? 
Are we perfectly certain that all our preserves are 
unvisited ? or, to come nearer to some of us, all our 
books untouched? But in places which many would 
consider more unlikely still, we may look for and ex- 
pect to find fungi: on whitewashed walls, plaster ceil- 
ings, dirty glass, old flannel, and old boots and shoes, 
or leather of any description ; on carpets, mats, and 
boards ; and even the plants of our herbaria must be 
watched against their ravages. Animals bear them 
about on their horns and hoofs, and the housefly 
often carries on its body the vegetating fungus, 
which ultimately deprives it of life. The yeast that 
is employed in fermenting our bread and our beer is a 
fungus, as well as the mildew and smut that infest 
our growing corn, From cesspools and traps the 
minute dust-like spores of hidden fungi rise into our 
dwellings; unseen they float in the air, entering every- 
