164 IN THE ACADIAN LAND. 



formed at the upper ends, and shot like bullets 

 into the air. Once I had the good fortune to 

 see this process in full operation. The fungus 

 grew on the side of a stump in the woods ; I 

 chanced to take a rest on the other side, and a 

 glint of sunshine fell across the bracket, that I 

 could not see from my position, but what I did 

 notice was regular pulsations of brilliant, glis- 

 tening particles, forming little puffs, like steam, 

 as they drifted across the sunbeam and vanished 

 instantly in the common daylight. Before look- 

 ing for the cause I guessed rightly that it was 

 a fungus sowing its spores by the tens of mil- 

 lions, and they were carried away on the sum- 

 mer air. The pulsation, or rhythmical action, 

 must have been in the mechanism of the object 

 itself, all its little guns fired at once. 



It would be " o'er long a tale to tell " of the 

 various forms taken by these things. They pro- 

 duce the dry-rot of timber, the "punk" of pines, 

 the touchwood of the yellow birch. They at- 

 tack dead trunks and limbs and help to reduce 

 them to their elements. Hardly a living spe- 

 cies of animal that does not suffer from this 

 great fungus tribe. They particularly seize 

 upon insects of many kinds, entering their 

 bodies by various channels. Once there, the 

 spore germinates and grows, at the expense of 



