FUNGI 



35 



u uni\eiMt\. Tlir most important of its buildings 

 :>< Itomanesque cathedral ( 1136), tin- bishop's 

 |..ilu-<-, tin- town house and hospital, ami the 

 county buildings. Its manufactures include leather, 

 woollen- .-mil flannels, oil, brandy and liqueurs, and 

 ,'.<<[ majolica ware; it produce- win'-, fruit, 

 ami toliacco, and has coul mines and marble- 

 .|u:nne-. .iii.l a flourishing trade in hogs and gall- 

 nut-. I'op. ( 1HH1 ) '28,801 ; (1891) 33,780. 



I iiuui. The early botanists 'considered the 

 fungi to he IIHSHX iintitnr and no plants at all,' 

 and regarded tln-ir strange an<l fitful appearance 

 without (lower or apparent seed as the strongest 

 argument for spontaneous generation. The liland 

 wholesomene>.s of >ome, yet fright fill poisonousness 

 or destructiveness of many others, with their con- 

 -'-. i in-lit world -old association with that crude and 

 fanciful p!i;irmae\ in wliich ancient medicine and 

 witchcraft were so inseparably intermingled, not a 

 lit lie enhanced these mysteries. Hence, although 

 in Sterlteeck's Tlientrunt, fi'ti/tt/xritiit ( 1675), the first 

 pulilished book entirely devoted to cryptogamie 

 plants, there is an excellent account and many 

 (inures ot" fungi, it was not, and indeed could not 

 be. until after that primary task of natural science 

 initiated by Linmcus the compilation of the 'Sys- 

 tem of Nature," the orderly descriptive catalogue of 

 natural things had made considerable progress in 

 almost all other directions, that its chapter dealing 

 with the fungi was fully commenced. From about 

 17M> onwards we have illustrated cryptogamic 

 floras essentially of the modern type, which not 

 only soon reached tolerable completeness for the 

 more obvious forms, but with the introduction and 

 improvement of the microscope even made rapid 

 progress with that description of the multifarious 

 minor forms which is even now far from ended. It 

 thus became known that some were produced from 

 reproductive cells or snores, just like a plant from 

 it -seed; hence for this Linnean school, whose central 

 monument is the works of Fries, each new form 

 was, naturally enough, simply a new species to be 

 ile-cribed. The identification, however, of the 

 fern and its prothallus (see FERNS) as phases of a 

 single life- history, and the thorough reinterpreta- 

 tion of tin 1 higher cryptogams and their unification 

 with the flowering plants thereupon effected by 

 Hofmeister, naturally gave a fresh impetus to the 

 study of the remaining lower groups of alg;e and 

 fungi. For fungi, this new movement was neaded 

 by Tulasne, who from 1851 onwards showed that 

 many of the different form-species hitherto described 

 were actually nothing more than the phases of a 

 single protean life-history. Tulasne essentially 

 relied iijion the actual anatomical continuity of 

 different adult forms, upon finding reproductive 

 structures hitherto regarded as specifically distinct 

 on one and the same vegetative body or mycelium ; 

 vhih; De Bary confirmed and extended these results 

 by the complementary method of cultivation from 

 the -pore. Tulasne's new doctrine of ' the pleomor- 

 |>liisiu <f the fungi' aroused storms of controversy ; 

 but the bigoted conservatism of the systematists in 

 the defence of their results, and the exaggerated 

 speculation and practical blundering of the younger 

 school in the ^interpretation of them, gradually sub- 

 a- the just claims of each obtained mutual 

 nition; and thanks to many workers, but 

 tally to the exact labours of De Bary and his 

 pupils, the classification and morphology of 

 fungi have thereafter been in harmonious progress, 

 wa- long before any satisfactory definition of 

 fungi was possible, their association with alga 1 

 (uemBelvee scarcely better known) at first resting 

 merely upon the negative characters which ex- 

 cluded lM)th from the higher plants. Their physio- 

 Jgical peculiarities, however, were more apparent ; 

 and their definition as a 'natural order" (or, as it 



gradually appeared, a vast class) waft accepted M. 

 ' embracing all Thallophytex which do not vege- 

 tate by means of intrinsic* chlorophyll.' The pro- 

 of research demonstrated the remote dis- 

 tinct m--- of -i. mi- tyjM-H of these from other*, and 

 the intimate relationship of certain fungi to paiti- 

 cular alga 1 of which they -eemed to be merely the 

 colourless forms. Hence it was argued, especially 

 by the physiologist Sachs, that such forms were no 

 more entitled to separate classification apart from 

 the alga- than were the very various types of 

 flowering plants e.g. dodder and broom-rape 

 which merely agree in having lost their chloroph\ II 

 through parasitism, apart from the ordinary green 

 plants to which they are respectively akin. Aban- 

 doning, then, the physiology of the vegetative 

 system, he proposed a classification of the algae 

 ami fungi according to their degree of reproductive 

 development (see ALGJE). This was, however, 

 going too far, and systernatists have returned to 

 the more conservative proposals of De Bary, who 

 excludes entirely from tne fungi the Bacteria (q.v.) 

 and the Myxomycetes, and, while recognising 

 that certain fungi are doubtless merely the colour- 

 less representatives of particular algal groups, yet 

 vastly simplifies the suoject by insisting upon ' an 

 Ascomycetous series or main series of fungi,' allteit 

 with more or less doubtfully related outlying forms. 



At the outset of this great series are usually 

 described two orders (sometimes united as Oomy- 

 cetes), both closely related in vegetative and repro- 

 ductive type to such simple alga 1 as Vauoheria 

 (see ALG^E). These are the Peronosporea 1 , in- 

 cluding such well-known moulds of living plants 

 as Phytophthora infestans ( Potato Disease, see PO- 

 TATO, Vol. VIII. page 356), Cystopus candidux 

 (White Rust of cruciferous plants), also Pythium 

 and Peronospora. The allied Saprolegma (see 

 SALMON ) gives its name to the other family. 



Of the Zygomycetes the commonest type is 

 Mucor nntcedo, the common white mould of dead 



Fig. 1. White Mould ( Mucor mucedo): 

 a, ripe sporangium with tew spores represented to show internal 

 septum ingrown as columella ; 6, beginning of conjugation 

 between two adjacent hyphw ; c, d, e. later stages of the pro- 

 cess ; /, germination of the thick-walled resting spore, with 

 short vegetative and immediate reproductive hypha. 



organic matter, particularly horse-dung, a form 

 easily cultivated and in every way peculiarly suit- 

 able 'for beginning the study of fungology. Start- 

 ing with a spore, this germinates into a filament or 

 hypha, which remains unicellular like that of the 

 preceding forms, and grows and branches rapidly 

 through the nutrient material or solution, the 

 whole growth of hyphjv l>eing termed the in i/rcli^nt. 

 Soon erect hypha 1 begin to bud from tne older 

 hyplur of the mycelium ; the tips of these enlarge 

 into spherical heads, which become separated off as 

 distinct cells, the future sporangium, by a partition 

 which grows, however, inwards, into the interior of 

 the enlarging spherical head, as the colttmella. The 

 protoplasm of the sporangium is meantime dividing 

 into a multitude of tiny cells, which surround 

 themselves with cell-walls as spores, while the 

 mineral waste products of this active change are 

 deposited in the common sporangia! wall, rendering 

 it exceedingly brittle. This readily breaks, scatter- 

 ing the spores, which immediately recommence the 

 same development. 



Sooner or later, however, a more evolved process 



