APPExNDIX TO PART II 



Some potatoes, which had been wrapped in several folds of paper, 

 placed in a box, and kept in a dark but moderately warm place 

 in the laboratory, were found in March to be enveloped in a kind 

 of net, formed of sprouts of two lines in thickness, and 10 to 15 

 inches in length. On these sprouts there were several hundred 

 small tubers, of -£- to -J- of an inch in thickness. The sprouts and 

 the tubers possessed a white color, and did not exhibit any signs of 

 leaves. On examining the parent potatoe with a microscope, it 

 was found that its exterior cells were still partly filled with 

 granules of starch ; but the interior was quite empty, and its 

 substance soft and elastic. The sprouts and the cells of the 

 young potatoes abounded in starch. 



The growth of these sprouts, and the formation of the tubers 

 at the expense of the constituents of the potatoes, give a good 

 illustration of the formation and nutrition of fungi. The organic 

 substance present in the potatoe obtains a new form by means of 

 the active power resident in the germ ; for, in this case, it cannot 

 be supposed that the food was extracted from the air. Now, just 

 as the constituents of the old potatoe entered into, and were again 

 found unchanged in the sprouts of the young ones, in like man- 

 ner animal and vegetable substances in a state of decay enter 

 into the fungi arising from them. Thus the ingredients of these 

 bodies, as the products of iheir putrefaction, pass over into the 

 fungi, exactly as the interior substance of the parent potatoe enters 

 into the sprouts and young tubers. For this conversion organic 



