STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



53 



replaced, almost universally, by the shorter, better-sounding Latin 

 plural — fungi. 



No fact is better understood in vegetable physiology than that the 

 chlorophyll or leaf-green of ordinary plants serves an important pur- 

 pose in their nutrition. Without entering into the details of its use- 

 fulness, I may say that it acts, in a measure, as a tool, by means of 

 which, using daylight as the motor power, the active portion of these 

 plants (protoplasm) breaks some of the water which they obtain from 

 the soil and the carbonic acid gas which they abstract from the 

 atmosphere into their chemical elements, and reconstructs these bricks 

 from the old structure into a new one available for plant growth. 

 This new substance is starch or something very like it chemically, 

 e. g., sugar or fat. A plant containing chlorophyll is, therefore, able 

 to make its own food from the air and soil; and it may be said with 

 equal certainty that a plant destitute of leaf-green must obtain a very 

 important part of its food from other sources. We know that starch, 

 sugar, oil and woody matter (cellulose) do not occur ready formed, 

 nor originate spontaneously in nature, but only where living proto- 

 plasm has acted — originally through the instrumentality of light and 

 chlorophyll; and it therefore needs no demonstration to show why 

 fungi, having none of this coloring matter, always live ou organized 

 material, — that is, on what is or has been part of some other living 

 thing. 



One of the commonest groups of 

 fungi is that which includes the puff- 

 balls and toadstools; and from what 

 has been said it will be seen why 

 these growths are found in well ma- 

 nured pastures, on rotting wood, and 

 in other places where organic matter 

 is going to decay. Most of these 

 plants are found on dead or decaying 

 substances, but there are, unfortu- 

 nately, a few exceptions to this gen- 

 eral rule. I say unfortunately, be-, 

 cause the only alternative is for them ^i"tii enlarged. 

 to grow on living matter, either vegetable or animal. 



A common sight in old orchards — far too common wherever the ap- 

 ple is grown — is the heart-rot or canker of trees, which, usually start- 

 ing from some unhealed pruning-wound, insidiously eats into the very 

 centre of the tree, up and down, until the once solid trunk is but a 



Section through a very small disoaped epot 

 ' of leaf, showing the fungus under the cuticle. 



