CHAPTER II 



GILLED MUSHROOMS, THEIR PROPAGATION AND STRUCTURE 



Gilled mushrooms, or agarics as they are called, are plants 

 that belong to the botanical group known as fungi. No 

 leaves, flowers, pollen or seeds are to be found on any fungi and 

 that is, perhaps, why they are regarded as belonging to a lower 

 order of vegetation. 



These plants, although rather unfamiliar to many persons, 

 occur in profusion in one form or another, throughout the 

 natural world. Among them are included germs or bacteria 

 which cause fevers and contagious diseases in man and in the 

 lower animals. Other fungi that grow upon the higher plants, 

 occur in endless numbers and constitute pests that damage or 

 destroy food crops and trees. Some of them are known as 

 rusts, others as smuts, rots, scabs and bunts. Mildews and 

 molds also belong among the fungi as do all the yeasts with 

 their mysterious power of bringing about the process of fer- 

 mentation. 



Among the fungi commonly known as mushrooms are the 

 puffballs, club fungi, coral fungi, hedgehog fungi, truffles, 

 trembling fungi, morels, stinkhorns, tube-bearing fungi and 

 lastly, the gilled fungi or agarics to which attention is directed 

 in this book. All fungi, whether bacteria, yeasts or agarics, 

 have in common an important characteristic feature that dis- 

 tinguishes them from the higher plants, and that is their lack 

 of chlorophyl. This remarkable substance that makes green 

 the leaves of trees and herbs, also enables them to utilize for 

 their nutrition the simple elements of air, watei and earth. 

 Fungi, on the other hand, possessing no chlorophyl, must, like 



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