FUNGI. 19 



and sweet for immediate use, it was locked in a cellar to 

 mature. At the end of three years, vSir Joseph, supposing that 

 time had now done its work, proceeded to open the cellar and 

 inspect its contents. Little did he think how nature had been 

 employed, and of the surprise which lay in wait. The door 

 refused to open. Being invincible by gentle means, it was 

 fairly cut away, but entrance was no nearer than before. The 

 cellar was found literally full of fungous growth, which had 

 borne the cask to the ceiling, where it stuck, upheld by fungi, 

 the produce of the wine, which had leaked and formed this 

 monstrous growth. 



Another English writer. Dr. Withering, says: — "Mr. 

 Stackhouse had repeatedly mentioned to me a large, esculent 

 fungus found on the sea coast in Cornwall, which is, I 

 believe, a monstrous variety of this species. Its whole habit 

 is very large, the button as big as a potato, the expanded 

 pileus (or cap) eighteen inches over, the stem as big as a 

 man's wrist, etc." He also tells of a specimen which weighed 

 fourteen pounds, and was found in an old hotbed. 



But huge as this fungus nuist have been, it by no means 

 equals one grown in Pannonia, and noted by Clusius in his 

 " History of Plants." Of this immense specimen (supposed 

 to have been Polypo/Ks fnvidosiis) " after satisfying the crav- 

 ings of a large, mycophilous household, enough remained to 

 fill a chariot ! " 



The phosphorescence or luminosity observed in several 

 fungi has given rise to many absurd conjectures. Such a 

 phenomenon depends on the respiration of oxygen, luminosity 

 ceasing when oxygen is unavailable. 



The coal mines of Dresden exhibit the interesting circum- 

 stance of fungi which emit light like pale moonbeams. A 

 Mr. Gardner states that while passing along the streets of a 

 Brazilian town he " observed some boys amusing themselves 

 with what appeared to be large fireflies, but which proved on 

 inspection to be a fungus belonging to the genus Agariais, 

 which gave out a l)rilliant, phosphorescent light of a pale 



