CHAPTER XXXVII. 



PARASITIC FUNGI AS FOUND IN A FOSSIL STATE. 



IT is a curious fact that representatives of some of our 

 common parasitic fungi are found in a silicified state in 

 fossil plant stems and roots of great antiquity. Some of 

 these parasites were in existence in company with the 

 higher cryptogams in Palaeozoic times. Indeed it is prob- 

 able that some fungi, not dissimilar in structure from 

 fungi which are now parasitic, led in remote geological 

 times a non- parasitic life upon the ground. We still 

 have a Botrytis named B. terrestris, Pers., which is fre- 

 quent on the naked ground. The species belonging to 

 Botrytis are very similar with the species described under 

 Peronospora, and they were till quite recently all grouped 

 together. 



The late Mr. Charles Darwin informed us that more 

 than forty years ago, Mr. Robert Brown, then Keeper of 

 the Department of Botany at the British Museum, showed 

 him silicified fungus mycelium in slices of fossil wood. 



Mr. William Carruthers, F.R.S., the present Keeper of 

 Botany at the British Museum, South Kensington, has 

 described silicified fungus mycelium resembling that of 

 a Peronospora found in the tissues of a fossil fern named 

 Osmundites Dowkeri, Carr., from the lower Eocene strata 

 of Herne Bay. The same gentleman has also detected a 

 fungus in a fossil Lepidodendron from the coal measures ; 

 and Mr. Butterworth, of Oldham, has also met with a 

 fungus in the vascular axis of Lepidodendron. A portion 

 of the latter example was drawn by us, and the drawings 

 are now in the Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn 



