56 THE FUNGI PREVAIL AT NIGHT 



fungous vegetables to develop their power only at night, 

 we detect another analogy between malaria and the fungi. 

 In vain do we search in the latter part of a day for young 

 mushrooms. The early riser finds them in their prime and 

 abundance. A field which at evening exhibited not a sin- 

 gle plant, is often whitened by their little umbrellas in the 

 morning. "It is well known," writes Comstock, "that 

 this tribe of plants springs up almost everywhere, espe- 

 cially among decaying substances, and that thousands may 

 be seen in the morning^ where none existed the evening 

 before." 



Even the more durable kinds of fungi appear to add 

 during the day little to their bulk, preferring to grow 

 almost solely under the eye of night ; so that these ano- 

 malous vegetables not only choose for their growth the sea- 

 son of vegetable repose, but the hours of vegetable SLEEP. 

 In another respect they are beings of contrast, for, while 

 other vegetables are adding oxygen to the air from which 

 they have extracted its carbon, these, as if they were averse 

 to agreeing with phenogamous plants "in any respect, are 

 eliminating carbonic acid, having extracted from the unde- 

 composed organic matter on which they live, its more 

 peculiar animal elements, the hydrogen and nitrogen. 



Mr. Sowerby, the best of authorities on this subject, 

 took the minute unopened volva of a Phallus Inodorus into 

 the house in the evening, and found it in the morning a 

 full grown plant. In his experiments nothing occurred to 

 show that this fungus grows in the day time. 



Supposing that the minutest fungi possess the general 

 properties of the class to which they belong, we may readily 

 perceive what prodigious influence must be exerted on them 

 by the damp rich air of a swamp and if they have, as 

 Heusinger alleges, a polarizing membrane, and conse- 



