SCAUP DUCK. 345 



thickened, and all the cavity within was covered with mucor, 

 or blue mould." 



" It is a most curious circumstance," this writer aads, 

 " to find this vegetable production growing within a living 

 animal, and shows that where air is pervious, mould will be 

 found to obtain, if it meets with sufficient moisture, and a 

 place congenial to vegetation. Now the fact is, that the 

 part on which this vegetable was growing was decayed, and 

 had no longer in itself a living principle ; the dead part, 

 therefore, became the proper pabulum of the invisible seeds 

 of the mucor, transmitted by the air in respiration ; and 

 thus nature carries on all her works immutably under every 

 possible variation of circumstance. It would, indeed, be 

 impossible for such to vegetate on a living body, being in- 

 compatible with vitality, and we may be assured that 

 decay must take place before this minute vegetable can 

 make a lodgment to aid in the great change of decomposi- 

 tion. Even with inanimate bodies the appearance of mould 

 or any species of fungi, is a sure presage of partial decay 

 and decomposition." 



, M. De Selys Longchamps has found a similar growth 

 lining the air-cells in the lungs of an Eider Duck ; * and 

 Mr. Owen described the same appearance as found by him- 

 self in the bronchial tubes of a Flamingo.f References 

 to descriptions and figures of various singular vegetable 

 growths on insects will be found in the first Part of the 

 third volume of the Transactions of the Entomological 

 Society of London ; and those acquainted with Edwards' 

 Gleanings in Natural History, will remember his coloured 

 representations of vegetating caterpillars, and vegetating 

 wasps, in the plates numbered 335 and 336, published 

 many years since. 



* Annals of Natural History, vol. viii. p. 229. 



t Proceedings of the Zoological Society for 1832, page 142. 



