FUNGI. 



401 



Fungoid diseases among our growing crops attracted but little 

 attention until the mischief produced by them became serious ; and the 

 microscope has enabled us to determine and grapple with the destroyer 

 in its variety of forms ; thus, we have our corn-crops withering under 

 the blighting influence of the Uredos and Pucemias, our vines, &c., 



fig. 188. Section of a Grape. 



under that of the Oidium, our esculents under the Botrytis infestans 

 (potato-blight): the same disease is seen to infect the tomata, fig. 187. 



The microscope has revealed to us that many of the skin diseases 

 attacking the human frame are but other forms of the same growth of 

 parasitic fungi, or cryptogamia, another low form of plant, presenting 

 at first filaments simple, then ramified, and formed by a single elon- 

 gated cell, or several cells placed end to end, as in those of the yeast- 

 plant. The disease known as Ringworm, infesting the heads of children, 

 is one out of forty-eight different species of Cryptogamia. The con- 

 ditions of growth of this low form of vegetable life on the human body 

 are the same as in other situations. Dr. Gudden, who has lately pub- 

 lished a work upon Cutaneous Diseases caused by " Parasitic Growths" 

 describes Ringworm under the name of Porrigo-fungus ; the spores of 

 which are round on the upper, and filamentous on the under surface. 

 Whenever the healthy chemical processes of nutrition are impaired, and 

 the incessant changes between the solids and the fluids slacken, then 

 the skin may furnish a proper soil for the fungi to take root in, should 

 the sporules come in contact with it. That dreadful disease known as 

 cancer will no doubt ultimately prove of vegetable growth, or a conver- 

 sion of the nutritive animal cell into that of a fungoid vegetable cell. 



The Rev. S. G. Osborne, during the cholera visitation of 1854, en- 

 deavoured to direct public attention to the very general distribution of 

 fungi. He says, " Only those who have closely studied these fungi can 



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