282 GERMS OF FUNGI. 



mushrooms are known by the name of spawn. Yet 

 though they are there they never germinate, if the 

 water continues, nor would they do so if the place 

 were to become quite dry. But the water brings 

 another tribe, the mosses, the germs of many of 

 which are as invisible when alone (and when with 

 the plants their existence may be said to be in- 

 ferred rather than seen) as those of the fungi; 

 and they carry on their labours, growing at the 

 tops summer and winter, and decaying at the bot- 

 toms, till they form a soil often many feet in thick- 

 ness, and sometimes rising higher than any of the 

 neighbouring grounds. 



Those invisible seeded plants, as well as some 

 of the animals which are minute in their size, 

 peculiar in their situations, and widely different in 

 their forms and habits from those quadrupeds and 

 birds with which we are most familiar, and which 

 have become, as it were, the types of animals 

 generally, in common language, have given occa- 

 sion not only to a belief that there is organic mat- 

 ter in so neutral a state as that it may of itself be- 

 come a land or a water plant, according as it falls 

 in the one situation or the other, and also that 

 there is inorganic matter so nearly approach- 

 ing to vitality, that it not only can, but actually 

 does, become alive of itself. That is a doctrine 

 which is not only believed among those who have 

 no pretensions to natural knowledge, but it is al- 

 ways now and then appearing under different mo- 

 difications among those who have ; and therefore 

 it is one against which beginners in the useful 

 study of nature shouldbe particularly on their guard. 

 It is as much as saying that certain kinds of mat - 

 ter can, without the agency of any thing else, give 



