HABITATS. 247 



sembles the drone, both in size and colour, more than any other 

 English insect. In the month of May it buries itself in the 

 earth and begins to vegetate. By the latter end of July, the 

 tree is arrived at its full growth, and resembles a coral branch, 

 and is about three inches high, and bears several little pods, 

 which, dropping off, become worms, and from thence flies, like 

 the English caterpillar." Torrubia Taylori, which grows from 

 the caterpillar of a large moth in Australia, is one of the finest 

 examples of the genus. Torrubia Robertsii, from New Zealand, 

 has long been known as attacking the larva of Hepialus 

 virescens. There are several other species on larvae of different 

 insects, on spiders, ants, wasps, &c., and one or two on mature 

 Lepidoptera, but the latter seem to be rare. 



That fungi should make their appearance and flourish in 

 localities and conditions generally considered inimical to vegetable 

 life is no less strange than true. We have already alluded to 

 the occurrence of some species on spent tan, and some others 

 have been found in locations as strange. We have seen a yellow 

 mould resembling Sporotriclium in the heart of a ball of opium, 

 also a white mould appears on the same substance, and more 

 than one species is troublesome in the opium factories of India. 

 A mould made its appearance some years since in a copper 

 solution employed for electrotyping in the Survey Department 

 of the United States,* decomposing the salt, and precipitating 

 the copper. Other organisms have appeared from time to time 

 in various inorganic solutions, some of which were considered 

 destructive to vegetable life, and it is not improbable that some 

 of these organisms were low conditions of mould. It may well 

 occasion some surprise that fungi should be found growing 

 within cavities wholly excluded from the external air, as in the 

 hollow of filberts, and the harder shelled nuts of Guilandina, in 

 the cavities of the fruit of tomato, or in the interior of an egg. 

 It is scarcely less extraordinary that Hypocrea inclusa should 

 flourish in the interior of a kind of truffle. 



From the above it will be concluded that the habitats of fungi 

 are exceedingly variable, that they may be regarded as almost. 

 * Berkeley's " Outlines," p. 30. 



