1 08 CRYPTOGAMI AFUNGI. 



ordinary mode of dissemination of the fungi even, cannot be de- 

 nied ; and were the facts which oppose its extension to every 

 cryptogamous species more numerous than they are, yet it might 

 he the safer course to leave their explanation to future inquiry, 

 than to call in the aid of a supposititious agent. But the facts 

 alluded to do not, properly speaking, stand in opposition to the 

 usual doctrine of vegetable reproduction. Some plants, more 

 particularly some fungi and algce, appear under circumstances and 

 in situations where, it is said, the presence of seeds is improbable 

 or inconceivable ; but the improbability may proceed from our 

 inability to trace the secret operations of nature, or from limited 

 investigations. To find facts inexplicable by a theory acknow- 

 ledged to be true, is not strange or even uncommon, but it seems 

 surpassing strange to suppose that atoms of unorganized matter 

 can unite themselves with similar atoms so as to assume forms 

 unvaried by differences in time and place, and such an organiza- 

 tion as admits the play of life and its usual signs, so that even 

 these parentless things produce a seed, and can and do afterwards 

 propagate their likes ! The mushroom, for example, has been 

 instanced as a very genuine production of equivocal generation, 

 but we well know that mushrooms shed a copious seminal powder, 

 and are often propagated by it. When, indeed, I ask myself what 

 equi vocal generation is, I can form no other conception of it than 

 of something analogous to chemical affinity, which may build up 

 fabrics as beautiful as are exhibited in mould, but which no one 

 has ever confounded with the lowest of vegetable forms ; so wide 

 is the interval which separates living from dead matter ; and this 

 difference the hypothesis fails to explain. Nor, perhaps, would 

 I be much in error, were I to place equivocal generation among 

 those causes which are purely figments of the mind; which, 

 like " great Comus," may " inveigle and invite the unwary sense/* 

 and give us the possession of a fancied knowledge, to continue 

 only until reason shall " unlock the clasping charm" of a name, 

 and restore us to ignorance and truth. 



But while I receive unconditionally the doctrine of Harvey 

 omiiia ex ovo I am not disposed to maintain that every thing 

 described in our systems as fungi are disseminated in accord- 

 ance with it. Many fungi appear to be merely morbid altera- 

 tions in the structure of vegetable textures, or diseased growths, 



