THE PA GE OF NA TURE. 2 1 9 



simplest class of fungi on the objects affected, and the 

 strange and almost inaccessible situations in which they 

 are found, as, for instance, in the inside of a large cheese, 

 in the core of an apple, beneath the wrapper with which 

 the careful housewife covers her cherished preserves, and 

 under the epidermis of living plants, localities where it 

 is difficult to conceive how any seed, however minute, 

 could find a lodgment. The nature and habits of these 

 plants are now, however, better understood than they 

 were in the time of La Marc ; and no intelligent natu- 

 ralist will, at the present date, be found to support 

 the theory of spontaneous generation. Enlarged and 

 more accurate researches into the mysteries of nature 

 have established the fact upon a sure and immovable 

 foundation, that a seed is as necessary for the production 

 of the minutest speck of mouldiness which the micro- 

 scope can reveal to our view, as the acorn is for the ger- 

 mination of the giant oak of the forest, or the date for 

 the growth of the magnificent palm of the desert. It is 

 true that these plants are most frequently found on the 

 products of animal or vegetable decomposition ; but 

 they occur in such situations, not because these decaying 

 substances originate them, but just because they afford 

 them the necessary conditions of their growth, their 

 germs having been previously deposited there by pre- 

 existing species. If we sow a quantity of the black dust 

 or spores of the common bread-mould on a stale crust, 

 we shall have a quicker growth and a more abundant 

 crop of fungi than if the crust be left to a natural or 

 chance supply of seeds ; just as the farmer has a surer 

 and more plentiful harvest when he deposits a sufficient 



