60 THE FUNGI PREVAIL AT NIGHT 



common moulds more common on such occasions, but there 

 often appear new, or unusual productions of this kind. 

 Hecker and Webster abound with examples of this truth. 

 These moulds were chiefly red, but sometimes white, yel- 

 low, gray, or even black. They arose in an incredibly 

 short time, on the roofs of houses, on the pavements of 

 cities; on clothes, on the veils, and handkerchiefs of women; 

 on various wooden domestic utensils, and on the meats 

 in the larder. Even the depths of cellars, and the in- 

 most recesses of cupboards and chests were invaded by 

 a blood-like mould, which filled the observers with disgust 

 and horror. 



Joseph Mather Smith remarks, u that pestilence; a 

 strong tendency in dead animal and vegetable substances 

 to rapid decomposition; morbid and immature fruits; and 

 a vast amount of insect life; seem to have a common 

 cause in epidemic meteoration." Admitting the extra- 

 ordinary tendency to decomposition manifested in epide- 

 mic periods, Craigie observes, " that the rapid decompo- 

 sition of vegetable and animal matters is to be regarded, 

 not as a cause of fevers, but an effect of the febriferous 

 state of the atmosphere, which thus displayed its insalu- 

 brious influence, not only on the human race, but on the 

 vegetable world, and on dead animal and vegetable 

 matter." 



Plutarch, in his life of Romulus, says, that in the first 

 great plague at Eome, it seemed to "rain blood." 



On the 3d of July, 1529, when the continental sweat- 

 ing sickness prevailed, a blood rain, as it was termed, ap- 

 peared at Cremona. In the sweating sickness of the Eng- 

 lish, there was remarked " an exuberance of the lowest 

 cryptbgamous vegetation." 



In that calamitous period, which commenced An. Dom. 



