280 ROT IN VEGETABLES, 



In desarts of hot and barren sand, where there is 

 not, upon ordinary occasions, food for any of the 

 insect tribes, and where recent animal remains are 

 very speedily dried up, such remains are found 

 without any insect ravages; and the same may 

 be said of places which are intensely cold. So 

 far, therefore, from even those that are called in- 

 ferior animals, being produced out of inorganic 

 matter, they are not produced out of the remains 

 of other animals, unless other circumstances be- 

 sides the presence of those remains be favourable 

 to their production. 



It is the same with vegetables. The fungi and 

 moulds which come upon these in their decay, do 

 not come upon them equally under all circum- 

 stances. The common rot (Serpula distruens), 

 which comes upon, and no doubt hastens the de- 

 struction of the timber of houses, comes only in 

 damp situations, and then only on the ends of the 

 timber that are near the walls. So also the dry 

 rot, or oak-leather fXylostroma giganteum), which 

 chastises ship owners so severely, for using oak 

 before it is properly matured in the tree, and dried 

 after being cut down, and also for keeping their 

 vessels damp and foul, and without ventilation, 

 never makes its appearance, even on bad timber, 

 if the air play around that timber with sufficient 

 freedom. The fungi, and other parasitical plants 

 which come upon timber, and almost all land 

 vegetables when in a state of decay, and hasten 

 their destruction, are, generally speaking, en- 

 couraged by moisture ; but, at the same time, 

 none of them grow naturally in the water ; and 

 thus, however rapidly timber may decay under 

 water, fungi never appear on it there. Various 



