OF THE FUNGI. 43 



vages to plants alone; they attach themselves to animal 

 structures and destroy animal life ; the oxygena equina has 

 a particular fancy for the hoofs of horses, and for the 

 horns of cattle, sticking to these alone; the belly of a tro- 

 pical fly is liable, in autumn, to break out into vegetable 

 tufts of fungous growth ; and the caterpillar to carry about 

 a clavaria larger than himself. The fungous disease called 

 muscardine destroys many silkworms, and the vegetating 

 wasp, of which everybody has heard, is only another mys- 

 terious blending of vegetable with insect-life. Funguses 

 visit the wards of our hospitals and grow out of the pro- 

 ducts of surgical diseases. Where then are they not to 

 be found?' Do they not abound like Pharaoh's plagues 

 everywhere? Is not their name legion, and their province, 

 ubiquity?" 



An ingenious friend proposes as an objection to my 

 theory, that as malarious fevers are specifically the same 

 everywhere, and as the plants of* temperate differ totally 

 from those of tropical, regions, how are we to account for 

 their identity ? The intermittent is a native of Russia and 

 Sweden, while it is also an endemic of the coast of Guinea, 

 and of the banks of the Orinoco. 



The answer given is, that of all plants of the same spe- 

 cies, only the fungi are known to be natural inhabitants of 

 the various climates of the earth; for to use the words of 

 Mr. Roques, " ive find mushrooms in every climate." We 

 saw on a piece of damp leather, at the Cape of Good Hope, 

 the same mucor mucedo that penetrates its tissue at Sierra 

 Leone, or St. Petersburgh. Like man, the fungi generally 

 live in any climate, though there are among them some 

 that infest only the steppes of Tartary, and others that 

 revel solely on the sands of Zahara. This ubiquity is 

 one of their most peculiar qualities. 



