TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 85 
gation is unsatisfactory, he jumps far too rapidly to his conclusions. It is quite 
possible that certain fungi may occur constantly in substances of a certain chemical 
or molecular constitution, but this may be merely a case of effect instead of cause. 
Besides, as I conceive, the only safe way of ascertaining what really originates 
from such bodies as those which he terms micrococci, or the larger ones commonly 
called yeast-globules, is to isolate one or two in a closed cell so constructed that a 
pellicle of air, if 1 may so term it, surrounds the globule of fluid containing the 
bodies in question, into which they may send out their proper fruit—a method 
which was successful in the case of yeast, which consists of more than one fungus, 
and of the little Sclerotiwn, like grains of gunpowder, which is so common on 
onions. Any one who follows the growth of moulds on moist substances, and at 
differents depths, as paste of wheat or rice-flour, will see that numberless different 
modifications are assumed in different parts of the matrix, without, however, a 
perfect identification with fungi of other genera. Some of these will be seen in 
the figures I have given in the ‘Intellectual Observer,’ and the ‘Journal of the 
Linnean Society,’ of different forms assumed by the moulds to which that for- 
midable disease, the fungus foot of India, owes its origin. This is quite a different 
order of facts, from the several conditions assumed by the conidiiferous state of 
some of the vesiculiferous moulds—as for example Botrytis Jonesii, which has 
been ascertained to be a conidiiferous state of Mucor mucedo, while two forms of 
fruit occur of the same mould in what is called Ascophora elegans ; or the still more 
marvellous modification which some of the Mucors undergo when grown under 
water, as evinced by some of the Saprolegniz, the connexion of which was indi- 
cated by Carus some fifty years ago, but which has never been fully investigated. 
When Hallier intimates that he has raised from cholera evacuations such a para- 
site as Urocystis occulta, he should have been content with stating that a form of 
fructification occurred resembling, but not idenical with, that fungus. Indeed, 
a comparison with authentic specimens of that species, published by Rabenhorst, 
under the generic name of Ustilago, shows that it is something very different, and 
yet the notion of cholera being derived from some parasite on the rice-plant rests 
very much on the occurrence of this form. Buteven supposing that some Urocystis 
(or Polycystis as the genus is more commonly named) was produced from cholera 
evacuations, there is not a particle of evidence to connect this with the rice-plant. 
In the enormous collections transmitted by Dr. Curtis from the southern United 
States, amounting to 7000 specimens, there is not a single specimen of rice with 
any endophytic fungus, and it is the same with collections from the East. Mr. 
Thwaites has made very diligent search, and employed others in collecting any 
fungi which may occur on rice, and has found nothing more than a small superfi- 
cial fungus nearly allied to Cladosporium herbarum, sullying the glumes exactly 
as that cosmopolitan mould stains our cereals in damp weather. Nice is occa- 
sionally ergoted, but I can find no other trace of fungi on the grains. Again, when 
he talks of Tilletia, or the Wheat Bunt, being derived from the Kast—supposing 
wheat to be a plant of Hastern origin, there is no evidence to bear out the asser- 
tion, as it occurs on various European grasses; and there is a distinct species 
ae preys on wheat in North Carolina, which is totally unknown in the Old 
“World. 
I might enter further into the matter, were it advisable to do so at the present 
moment. All I wish, however, is to give a caution against admitting his facts 
too implicitly, especially as somewhat similiar views respecting disease have lately 
reached us from America, and have become familiar from gaining admittance into a 
journal of such wide circulation as ‘All the Year Round,’ where Hallier’s views 
are noticed as if his deductions were perfectly logical. 
The functions of spiral vessels, or of vascular tissue in general, have long been 
a subject of much controversy, and few matters are of more consequence as regards 
the real history of the distributicn of sap in plants. A very able paper on the 
subject, to which allusion was made by Dr. Hooker in his address, has been pub- 
lished by Mr. Herbert Spencer (than who few enter more profoundly into ques- 
tions of physiology) in the Transactions of the Linnean Society. By a line of 
close argument and observation he shows, from experiments with coloured fluids 
capable of entering the tissues without impairing vitality, and that not only in 
