Tae NorTHERN MuiIcROScoPIsT. 
NG!) Tz. DECEMBER. 1881. 
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY 
OF FUNGI. 
By THE Rev. J. E. Vize, M.A. 
Continued from page 266. 
OW about Fungi themselves. What is their place in the vege- 
table kingdom? Are they especially to be distinguished from 
their allies? Acknowledging that all lines of demarcation are 
optional and therefore not necessarily rigid, there are certain 
means by which Fungi are separated from their close companions 
Algee and Lichens. An Alga draws its nourishment through the 
whole of its surface through the water in which it grows absolutely, 
or the excessively moist place of its existence which is the same to 
it as water ; besides this it is propagated by means of zoospores, 
tetraspores, etc. Lichens are propagated by means of sporidia 
contained in asci, also by green bodies which occur in their frond 
or thallus, called gonidia. Fungi are propagated by bodies called 
spores or sporidia, and they are nourished from the substance on 
which they grow through their mycelium. Fungi are in fact flower- 
less plants formed of cells or threads or both combined, but never 
having gonidia like lichens. “Their fructification consists either 
of cells attached externally to threads which either arise immediately 
from their mycelium, or from an especial fructificative tissue, and 
which are then called spores, or of similar bodies produced in 
little sacs or tubes, and then called sporidia.” A singular fact is 
observable about Fungi, so singular indeed that it has been pro- 
posed to assign them a special locality between the animal and 
vegetable kingdoms ; “ they absorb oxygen and give out carbonic 
acid,”—hence their office occurs to be, at all events in this respect, 
like an animal, in confirmation of which you will never find a 
fungus with the beautiful green color of vegetables ; but if there be 
green at all, it is invariably of a metallic tint. 
Having defined what a Fungus is, and distinguished it from 
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