SCAUP DUCK. 343 



appeared to be in the lungs, and in the membrane that 

 separates them from the other viscera ; this last was much 

 thickened, and all the cavity within was covered with 

 mucor, or blue mould." 



"It is a most curious circumstance," this writer adds, 

 " to find this vegetable production growing within a living 

 animal, and shows that where air is pervious, mould will be 

 found to obtain, if it meets with sufficient moisture, and a 

 place congenial to vegetation. Now the fact is, that the 

 part on which this vegetable was growing was decayed, and 

 had no longer in itself a living principle ; the dead part, 

 therefore, became the proper pabulum of the invisible seeds 

 of the mucor, transmitted by the air in respiration ; and 

 thus nature carries on all her works immutably under every 

 possible variation of circumstance. It would, indeed, be 

 impossible for such to vegetate on a living body, being in- 

 compatible with vitality, and we may be assured that 

 decay must take place before this minute vegetable can 

 make a lodgment to aid in the great change of decomposi- 

 tion. Even with inanimate bodies the appearance of mould 

 or any species of fungi is a sure presage of partial decay 

 and decomposition." 



M. De Selys Longchamps has found a similar growth 

 lining the air-cells in the lungs of an Eider Duck ; * and 

 Mr. Owen described the same appearance as found by himself 

 in the bronchial tubes of a Flamingo.-f- References to des- 

 criptions and figures of various singular vegetable growths 

 on insects, will be found in the first Part of the third 

 volume of the Transactions of the Entomological Society of 

 London ; and those acquainted with Edwards 1 Gleanings in 

 Natural History will remember his coloured representa- 



* Annals of Natural History, vol. viii. page 229. 



f Proceedings of the Zoological Society for 1832, page 142. 



