THE MYSTERIOUS FUNGUS 273 



eat that grain with leprosy and madness, has one 

 of the most astonishing. The spores are upon 

 the grain when it is sown. There is no trace of 

 them or of the mycelium in the leaf or the root or 

 the stem during all the months that the plant is 

 growing. You would think that the sap and the 

 other digestive and chemical processes would have 

 converted them again and again into the healthy 

 life of the plant. But when the time of fruiting 

 comes again, there is the ergot fructifying in the 

 ear in long horn-like spikes for all men to see. 



Some of the fungi live uncommonly hard. 

 They cannot, like the plants, convert inorganic 

 substances such as carbonic acid gas into food. 

 Chlorophyl alone can do that, and it is apparent 

 that the fungi have not that any more than we 

 ourselves. They have almost as good a claim in 

 this respect to be called animals as plants. There 

 is plenty of organic food for the toadstools in the 

 floor of the wood, in the decaying bulk of the tree, 

 in the richly manured field, in the juices of a doomed 

 caterpillar, in a cider vat, or a piece of stale bread. 

 But there is a fungus that grows in the pipes that 

 convey running mountain water with not a grain 

 of impurity in a hundred gallons. In such an 

 unpromising medium, this particularly thrifty 

 fungus masses up till it flows from the end of the 

 pipe in streamers of red jelly, and, later on, till 

 it chokes the conduit and stops the water from 

 running. 



Others of this enterprising class can get a living 



