THE PAGE OF NATURE. 199 



the rate of an inch per hour. In the Polynesian Islands, 

 so favourable to vegetable life are the climate and soil, 

 that turnip, radish, and mustard-seed when sown show 

 their cotyledon leaves in twenty-four hours ; melons, 

 cucumbers, and pumpkins spring up in three days, and 

 peas and beans in four. But swift as is this develop- 

 ment of vegetation in highly favourable circumstances, 

 the rapidity of fungoid growth, under ordinary condi- 

 tions, is still more astonishing. These plants usually 

 form at the rate of twenty thousand new cells every 

 minute. The giant puff-ball (Bovista gigantea), occasion- 

 ally to be seen in fields and plantations, increases from 

 the size of a pea to that of a melon in a single night ; 

 while the common stinkhorn (Phallus impudicus), has 

 been observed to attain a height of four or five inches 

 in as many hours. Mr. Ward, in his work On the 

 Growth of Plants in closely -glazed Cases, says of it : "I 

 had been struck with the published accounts of the ex- 

 traordinary growth of Phallus impudicus. I therefore 

 procured three or four specimens in an undeveloped state, 

 and placed them in a small glazed case. All but one 

 grew during my temporary absence from home. I was 

 determined not to lose sight of the last specimen ; and 

 observing one evening that there was a small rent in the 

 volva, indicating the approaching development of the 

 plant, I watched it all night, and at eight in the morn- 

 ing the summit of the pileus began to push through the 

 jelly-like matter with which it was surrounded. In the 

 course of twenty-five minutes it shot up three inches, 

 and attained its full elevation of four inches in one 

 hour and a half. Marvellous are the accounts of the 



