204 FOOTNOTES FROM 



04 



fungus, however, j* its structure is uniform throughout, 

 can be re-formed with equal facility. Even the organs 

 of reproduction, which may be considered its most highly 

 organized parts, can be replaced or repaired if in any 

 way injured. The tubes of the toadstool, and the gills 

 of the mushroom, have been cut out and separated from 

 the living plant by way of experiment, and yet in a 

 brief space of time they have been so carefully repro- 

 duced, that no one could possibly tell they had ever been 

 removed. Snails, to whose soft tender lip they form a 

 succulent and agreeable morsel, are continually eating 

 holes into them, but when they are in active growth, 

 they speedily fill them up again with new tissue. Puff- 

 balls growing among grass on the borders of wood- 

 lands, and in the open meadows, are frequently very 

 much injured by the scythe of the mower, cut open, and 

 whole parts sliced off, but these wounds speedily heal 

 themselves, and the parts that have been removed are 

 remodelled, without leaving the slightest cicatrice to 

 mark the point of junction or the seat of injury. 



Owing likewise to this extreme simplicity of structure, 

 they possess the faculty of almost indefinite expansion, 

 determined only by the amount of pabulum which the 

 decaying substances on which they are produced afford. 

 The limits of some species are strictly marked out, and 

 they rarely exceed them, retaining nearly the same 

 dimensions throughout their whole lives. It is princi- 

 pally the smallest and simplest species which are thus 

 circumscribed ; and these make up by their immense 

 profusion for the insignificance of their individual state. 

 The largest and most highly developed species, which are 



