BOTANICAL: THE LOWER ORDERS. 141 



square, and weighing eighty-three pounds, was com- 

 pletely raised an inch and a half out of its bed by a 

 mass of toadstools (which are fungi); nearly the whole 

 pavement of the town being upheaved by the same cause. 



The author of " Footnotes from the Page of Nature " 

 tells us that "countless millions of the subtle seeds of 

 fungi, invisible to the naked eye and light almost as the 

 particles of vapour around them, are continually floating 

 in the air we breathe, or swimming in the water we drink, 

 or lying in the impalpable dust and sand of the soil, 

 waiting but the combination of a few simple circum- 

 stances, the presence of warmth or moisture, or a suitable 

 matrix, to display their vital energies, and to burst into 

 full, free, independent life. Hundreds of thousands of 

 the minute germs of the various moulds which approach 

 us in our very houses, and fasten upon different articles 

 of domestic use, might be, and often are dancing about 

 in the air-currents of our apartments, though invisible 

 to us; but could we sufficiently magnify them, as a 

 sunbeam darted in at our windows and illuminated their 

 bodies, they would appear like so many cannon-balls 

 moving rapidly up and down, and in every direction. 



"These countless myriads, then, of invisible seeds 

 which continually float in our atmosphere, ever ready to 

 alight and spring into life as the advanced heralds of the 

 plague and the pestilence, may well strike us with 

 astonishment, if not with awe. Above us, about us, and 

 in us they roam like vigilant spirits, seeing after our 

 physical constitution, but gladly availing themselves of 

 the slightest flaw to work our destruction. 



"Although fungi are in an especial manner capable 

 of universal dissemination, yet we find that in their 

 geographical distribution they are as much restricted as 

 other plants." 



