CRYPTOGAMIA FUNGI. 107 



tinous, or formed merely of tubular filaments. A few of them 

 are of less than ephemeral existence ; others attain maturity 

 slowly, and remain unchanged for a very long period ; while the 

 greater number, although surviving the day of their birth, are 

 still of quick growth and short duration. Species of a green co- 

 lour are very rare amongst them, and in these few it is merely 

 superficial ; but they exhibit all the other colours in every varie- 

 ty of shade, and the tints are often very brilliant. " In the co- 

 loured drawings of the more perfect plants," says Dr FLEMING, 

 " the artist is sometimes too profuse in tints, and the figures ex- 

 hibit a gaudy aspect ; but in the colouring of figures of the fungi, 

 he need be under little apprehension of committing excess. Na- 

 ture having withheld from this portion of her plants those flowers 

 which form the chief beauties of the higher orders, and even the 

 leaves with which they are clothed, has profusely scattered her 

 colours over the whole surface of the mushrooms, ornamenting 

 the cap with one colour, the gills with a second, and the stem 

 with a third. Let but the lover of natural history free his mind 

 from prejudice, and then examine the forms and colouring of the 

 fungi, and he will be compelled to admit, that many of them rival 

 in symmetry and splendour the rose and the lily, those gaudy 

 ornaments of Flora." 



The seeds of fungi are produced either on the external surface 

 or internally. They are exceedingly minute and multitudinous, 

 generally globular and pellucid, either naked, or more commonly 

 contained in capsules of various forms. They begin to vegetate 

 and develope themselves when our trees and herbs assume the 

 livery of decay the " sere and yellow leaf;" and they appear in 

 almost every possible variety of situation. The manner in which 

 they are thus widely disseminated is one of the most curious and 

 perplexing inquiries in vegetable physics. I cannot think that 

 the doctrine of equivocal generation, entertained by the earlier 

 writers, and of late revived from the slumber of at least a century, 

 by some modern botanists, affords any admissible explanation of 

 the phenomena. Its advocates dwell much and long upon some 

 isolated experiments and facts, until, apparently, they forget that 

 these facts are very few indeed, when compared with those from 

 which has been deduced the law that every living being originates 

 from an organized body produced by its like. That this is the 



