OF BRITISH FUNGI. 103 



beer for an hour, budding will have commenced (as in 

 fig. g). These buds will ultimately increase to the size 

 of the parent cells, and these will again bud ; so that 

 in six or eight hours a string of cells will be found to 

 have been produced, attached to each other like a string 

 of beads, with occasional lateral branches. Some authors 

 have referred the yeast-plant to a low station in a sub- 

 division of Algcs. 



The vinegar-plant is of a similar nature, and both 

 are more correctly included amongst those plants with 

 which we have associated them. This view is supported 

 by the most eminent mycologists of the present day. 



MUCORACEOUS FUNGI. 



THE fifth group or family, the Physomycetes, is a 

 small one, at least so far as British examples are con- 

 cerned, and forms an intermediate link between the 

 Sporiferous, or naked-spored fungi, and the Sporidiife- 

 rotis, or those in which the spores are inclosed, to which 

 this group belongs. In the Physomycetes, the cells 

 which contain the spores are bladder-shaped, and 

 scattered upon threads, which are not compacted into a 

 distinct hymenium. Like the true moulds, these 

 minute plants are found upon decaying vegetable 

 substances, especially articles of food. The bread- 

 mould is a common and familiar example, and if, in 

 this instance, decay has not already taken place, it is 

 speedily accelerated. 



