174 CRYPTOGAMOUS OR FLOWERLESS PLANTS. [SECTION 17. 



this bursts at maturity and discharges innumerable spores. The blue 

 Cheese-Mould (Fig. 588) bears a cluster of branches at top, each of 

 which is a row of naked spores, like a string of beads, all breaking apart 



at maturity. Botrytis 



(Fig. .589), the fruit- 

 ing stalk of which 

 branches, and each 

 branch is tipped with 

 a spore, is one of the 

 many moulds which 

 live and feed upon the 

 juices of other plants 

 or of animals, and are 

 often very destructive. 

 The extremely nume- 

 rous kinds of smut, rust, mildew, the ferments, bacteria, and the like, 

 many of them very destructive to other vegetable and to animal life, are 

 also low forms of the class of Fungi.^ 



Fig. 587. Ascophora, the Bread-Mould. 588. Aspergillus glaucus, the mould 

 of cheese, but common on mouldy vegetables. 589. A species of Botrytis. All 

 magnified. 



1 The "Introduction to Cryptogamous Botany," or third volume of "The Botan- 

 ical Text Book," now in preparation by the author's colleagixe, Professor Farlow, 

 will be the proper guide in the study of the Flowerless Plants, especially oi tlie 

 Algae and Fungi. 



