222 FOOTNOTES FROM 



cannon-balls, moving rapidly up and down, and in every 

 direction. If we venture for a moment to imagine the 

 overwhelming number of seeds which the different species 

 of fungi must disseminate in the course of a single year, 

 if we consider that each individual of the common puff- 

 ball contains upwards of ten millions of seeds, and these 

 so small as to form a mere cloud when puffed into the 

 air, and that a single filament of the mould which in- 

 fests our bread and preserves, will produce as many 

 germs as an oak will acorns, so that a piece of decaying 

 matter, not two inches each way, will scatter upon the 

 air at the slightest breath of the summer breeze, or the 

 gentlest touch of the smallest insect's wing, as many 

 seeds, quick with life, as this country will produce of 

 acorns in a twelvemonth ; if we take these things into 

 consideration, it is not too much to suppose that the 

 seeds of fungi must be ubiquitous, and from their exces- 

 sively minute size penetrate into every place, even into 

 the stomachs and other parts of animals. This circum- 

 stance has been made the ground of a belief that 

 malarial and epidemic fevers have their origin in crypto- 

 gamic vegetables or spores. Much valuable information 

 has of late years been acquired regarding the habits 

 and mode of propagation of these diseases ; but little 

 as yet has been ascertained regarding their essential 

 nature. The pestilence still " walks in darkness," and 

 neither chemistry nor any other science can tell us what 

 is its essential nature, nor in what its terrible potency 

 consists. If the spores of fungi be really the excit- 

 ing cause, in predisposing circumstances, of zymotic dis- 

 eases, these minute bodies conveyed through the air, and 



