OF THE FUNGI. 47 



is another and special vegetation, which, whatever may 

 be the climate, has its spring time and summer in the 

 autumnal season of the year. On the exhausted debris, 

 and the varied exuvise of plants, weeds and grasses ; from 

 root to leaf ; under ground and above ground ; feeds a race 

 of vegetables which wait for their food to the latest period 

 of the season of heat, and then flourish most when the more 

 perfect forms have completed their annual task, and sub- 

 mit to the inroads of these Goths of pnytology. 



Governed in a great measure by the phenomena imme- 

 diately around him, an observer, seeing the period of sick- 

 ness succeeding to the active vegetative season, assigns the 

 cause to the climatic events which then ordinarily arise. 

 Thus African writers believe that the rains are the imme- 

 diate producers of malaria, for they descend in torrents in 

 July, when the vegetation of that torrid clime is on the 

 decline. On the other hand, the Sardinian supposes that 

 the sickness of his hot and dry autumn, is the result 

 of the heat and aridity, and that droughts after rains, and 

 not rains after droughts, cause his miasmata. 



In the insular West Indies, there are heavy rains in 

 August and September, which are sickly months; whereas, 

 the pestilential season of Demarara is also in August and 

 September, although they are there the dry months. 



Egypt, although placed in the northern hemisphere, en- 

 joys a climate almost the reverse of that of other countries 

 similarly situated. During the summer scarcely any rain 

 descends. At Cairo there are but four or five showers in 

 a year, and in Upper Egypt only one or two. Near the 

 sea, showers are not quite so rare. Everything, therefore, 

 is, in the hot months, brown and dry and hard dews 

 rarely descend, and the parched land lies locked up in a 

 barren drought. About the first of June the Nile begins 



