AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF FUNGI. 281 
attack. My own notion is that ring-worm is very easy to cure. 
Two essentials are needful, and if used are almost certain to be 
effectual in a short time. So sure are they that I have known an 
instance wherein a family had for months the ring-worm and 
yet were well in a very short time. The cure is recorded I believe 
in the Proceedings of the Literary and Philosophical Society of 
Manchester. 
Insects are also liable to be attacked with fungoid parasites. 
The silkworms in France have suffered severely. Wasps have been 
seen alive infested with a growth which eventually deprived them 
of life. Between twenty and thirty species of ascigerous Fungi have 
been recorded as parasitic on insects. One of our British speci- 
mens is very beautiful ; it grows on the pupe of moths buried in 
the ground in the autumnal part of the year, and it is of a splendid 
orange red colour, scarcely two inches high, covered in its clavate 
head with tubercles. The contrast between the scarlet head of the 
fungus, and the green grass in which it grows is very gladdening to 
the sight of the mycologist who has never met with a specimen in 
his work. Let us not forget whilst speaking of the Fungi attacking 
insects, that many insects live upon Fungi; they are natural food 
for them. If you want the insect find the fungus on which it feeds, 
and you will get what you want. 
But let us examine a little now into the Potato disease, which, 
as most of you know, is a fungoid growth, and has caused so much 
injury to the potatoes for years past. A popular idea prevails that 
the potato disease comes down with the warm rains of summer. 
The notion originates in the fact that the leaves of the potato are 
seen to be diseased after the showers of July. ‘This is a fact, and 
you will observe that when there is an absence of rain, the leaves 
have not that brown spot upon them; rain is essential to their 
development, and must come, or there must be very heavy dews at 
night to answer the same purpose. Wherein then is the fallacy as 
to the disease coming in the rain? It is in this, that the rain by 
no means has the disease in itself. It only causes to grow that 
which was already awaiting considerable moisture before it could 
vegetate vigorously. Moreover the brown spots on the leaves are 
not the first startings of the disease ; they are only proofs that the 
disease is at work elsewhere. The first part affected certainly is 
the tuber—that part of the potato which which we eat at table— 
the tuber is affected by what we call the resting spore (oospore), 
which is dormant for nearly the whole year. 
(Zo be continued. ) 
