of Imperfect Plants. 259 



trees ; others on decayed fruit or on decaying cheeses, as the 

 Mucors; others on damp and wet walls; and others on ani- 

 mal ordure. 



Many of the Fungi are altogether destitute of root, or at 

 least of any conspicuous root, being attached to some appro- 

 priate basis of support merely by means of a flattened and 

 adhesive surface. If any of them exhibits a root, it is nothing 

 more than a few fibres. The frond is thin and flat, or glo- 

 bular, or bell-shaped, as in Nidularia, adhering to a basis 

 without any pedicle. But in a variety of genera it is furnished 

 with a stipe, solid or hollow, cylindrical or compressed, from 

 the size of a crow-quill to an inch or more in diameter, and 

 from being almost sessile, to six or eight inches in height. 

 Of the stipitate Fungi many are surmounted with a sort of co- 

 nical production denominated the pileus, or cap, as in Agaricus 

 campestris, the Common Mushroom. Its upper surface is ge- 

 nerally smooth, though sometimes wrinkled ; generally of a 

 white or yellow colour, but often of a beautiful red, as in the 

 elegant example of Amanita muscaria, or Fly Fungus. The 

 under surface is furnished for the most part with a number of 

 thin and flat substances, resembling in their form the gills of a 

 fish, and designated by the same name. Some have the ad- 

 ditional appendage of a veil or curtain, inclosing the gills, in 

 the early stage of their growth ; and some have the appendage 

 of a wrapper, enveloping the whole of the frond. 



If the inner surface of the curtain is carefully examined with 

 a good magnifier before the time of its natural detachment 

 from the pileus, it will be found to be furnished with a number 

 of fine and delicate threads supporting small globules: these 

 Hedwig regards as the stamens. If the gills are next ex- 

 amined in the same manner and about the same period, the 

 surface will be found to be furnished with a multitude of small, 

 tender and cylindrical substances, surmounted with a small 

 globule : these he regards as being probably the styles and 

 summits. But however this may be, the gills do eventually, 

 and in their ripened state, discharge spontaneously multitudes 

 of small and minute granules, whether seeds or gems, from 

 which the species may be propagated. Let any one put a 

 sheet of white paper under a frond about the time that it reaches 

 maturity, and he will soon find it covered with a fine and 

 brown powder discharged from the gills. In Boletus this 

 receptacle is the tubes, in the Mucors it is the globule sur- 

 mounting the stipe, in Peziza it is the upper surface of the 

 frond only, and in Clavaria it is the general superficies. 



Some Fungi are extremely detrimental to our growing crops 

 of wheat, barley and oats, lodging and vegetating in the leaf 

 •1 L2 



