BOTANICAL: THE LOWER ORDERS. 139 



commonly known as the "bacon-beetle," had somehow 

 or other got into the box, and had produced such an 

 enormous family that the entire collection was destroyed, 

 leaving the remains as a witness of what may be the 

 consequence of a single act of incaution. 



Again, I remember, among many other instances, 

 how that one whom I well knew was surprised at find- 

 ing the boards of the floor in his little parlour lift up the 

 carpet which covered them; and, on removing both, he 

 found, to his amazement, that the soft heads of some 

 rhubarb plants, waking up to their usual spring-time 

 work, had been left in the earth which formed the 

 " foundation " of the house, the boards being laid only 

 a foot or two from it, and they were actually the cause 

 of the removal of the floor. 



Again, in the city of Gloucester, it was observed that 

 the thick paving-stones of one street of the city were, one 

 after another, split, as if some mischievous fellow had 

 wantonly damaged them while men slept. On lifting 

 them up, guess the surprise on finding the stone-breaker 

 to consist of a vast number of fungoid microscopical 

 plants, whose united strength had produced the breakage. 



But still again ; another friend, a shipbuilder, came 

 to me one day, and said he had noticed the gradual 

 removal of the big logs of timber that lay in the yard, 

 and after wondering what could have shifted them from 

 their position as they lay on the bare earth, he changed 

 the place of one, and found beneath a white mass of 

 soft fibrous matter growing, which, when he brought me 

 a specimen, I found to be a mass of fungoid plants, so 

 firmly joined to each other that their interwoven mass 

 resembled thick grey felt. 



Do you know what "dry-rot" is? Another of my 

 friends, standing on the naked boards of his kitchen, sud- 



