FUNGI AS SCAVENGERS. 175 



food. Those which grow upon decayed wood are, however, 

 very unwholesome, and others are not only poisonous, at 

 least to man, but so offensive that they cannot be considered 

 any improvement upon the refuse to which they have given 

 a new form. Mr. Cooke mentions one, the scent of which 

 became in an hour or two worse than that of any dissecting 

 room, and was perfectly intolerable until wrapped in twelve 

 folds of thick brown paper. 



Still, what is disgusting to us is doubtless savoury to 

 others, for many of the beetle tribe are entirely dependent 

 upon the fungi for food. 



Wherever decaying vegetable matter of any kind is met 

 with, there fungi are sure to be present, hastening on the 

 process and growing so rapidly that a crop of toadstools will 

 spring up and a puff-ball grow prodigiously in a single night. 



They are not even particular about growing in the light, 

 and are found in mines growing on the wooden pegs driven 

 into the walls for purposes of measurement, and at one time 

 there was a specimen on the woodwork of the tunnel near 

 Doncaster which measured fifteen feet across. 



No substance, animal or vegetable, comes amiss to them, 

 and they will grow on and consume the defunct members of 

 their own race. 



In New Zealand there is a certain caterpillar which, after 

 swallowing the spores of a fungus, buries itself in the ground 

 and dies. The spores take root in it and the fungus grow- 

 ing and absorbing the entire contents of the skin, takes the 

 exact form of the creature, but always throws out a joint at 

 the back of the head. It looks exactly like a caterpillar 

 with a twig growing out of it, and is as hard as wood. 



