264 ROT IN VEGETABLES, 



animals that will prey on the carcasses of land ani- 

 mals when deposited there, there are none that place 

 their eggs in those bodies for the purpose of being 

 hatched. In deserts of hot and barren sand, where 

 there is not, upon ordinary occasions, food for any 

 of the insect tribes, and where recent animal re- 

 mains are very speedily dried up, such remains are 

 found without any insect ravages ; and the same 

 may be said of places which are intensely cold. So 

 far, therefore, from even those that are called infe- 

 rior animals, being produced out of inorganic mat- 

 ter, they are not produced out of the remains of 

 other animals, unless other circumstances besides 

 the presence of those remains be favourable to their 

 production. 



It is the same with vegetables. The fungi and 

 moulds which come upon these in their decay do 

 not come upon them equally under all circumstances. 

 The common rot (Serpula distruens), which conies 

 upon, and no doubt hastens, the destruction of the 

 timber of houses, comes only in damp situations, 

 and then only on the ends of the timber that are 

 near the walls. So also the dry rot, or oak-leather 

 (Xylostroma giganteum), which chastises ship-owners 

 so severely, for using oak before it is properly ma- 

 tured in the tree, and dried after being cut down, 

 and also for keeping their vessels damp and foul, 

 and without ventilation, never makes its appearance, 

 even on bad timber, if the air play around that tim- 

 ber with sufficient freedom. The fungi, and other 

 parasitical plants which come upon timber, and al- 

 most all land vegetables, when in a state of decay, 

 and hasten their destruction, are, generally speak- 

 ing, encouraged by moisture ; but, at the same time, 

 none of them grow naturally in the water ; and thus, 

 however rapidly timber may decay lender water, 

 fungi never appear on it there. Various aquatic 

 plants adhere to the surface of submerged timber, 

 but they do so, not for subsistence, but for stability ; 



