MISCHIEFS OF FUNGI. 45 



habitat of a certain fungus ; more than one species is 

 developed on extracted opium, and the factories in India 

 have suffered greatly from their presence. A few years 

 since, a little mould developed in the solution of cop- 

 per used for electrotyping in the department of the 

 Coast Survey of Washington, proved an intolerable 

 nuisance. 



The farmer groans over the mischief occasioned by 

 the potato -mould; the gourmand anathematises the 

 havoc which fungi make among the choicest cooked 

 provisions ; and the rarest wines prized by the gourmet 

 acquire a taste and odour rendering them undrinkable, 

 owing to the presence of a fungus which first attacks 

 the corks. The dry-rot is not merely the terror of 

 naval architects, but occasionally obstructs a railway 

 tunnel ! In Dr Carpenter's * Elements of Physiology,' 

 it is related that in the vicinity of Basingstoke a paving- 

 stone, weighing 83 lb., was raised out of its bed an inch 

 and a half by a mass of toad-stools, and that nearly the 

 whole pavement of the town was displaced from the 

 same cause. And as fungi sometimes occur on glass, 

 and even on smooth metallic substances, the most re- 

 cent specimens of wonderful architecture the Crystal 

 Palace and the " Black Prince " may yet be doomed 

 to furnish demon stration that neither glass houses nor 

 iron ships are safe from the destructive effects of fungi. 

 When we add that fungi find their way into eggs, and 

 that in an incredibly short time they often appear in 

 the very heart of a loaf, our readers will be prepared for 

 the transition which we now make to the diseases caused 

 by fungi. 



Spores of fungi have been detected, apparently un- 

 injured, in the dust of the trade- winds, in flakes of snow 

 collected from the air, on the mucous surfaces of the 

 internal organs of animals, and in the dejections of 

 cholera. M. Charles Kobins's i Natural History of the 

 Vegetable Parasites Growing on Man and other Ani- 

 mals ' is a large treatise on the diseases occasioned by 



