Animal or Vegetable >? | 261 
the ground and there produces the spores which, scattered by the wind, find a 
lodgment in the bodies of other unfortunate caterpillars who may be passing through 
the infected district on their way to the seclusion necessary for their change, first into 
the chrysalis and then into the winged moth. 
The fungus, which is the second stage of the organism, is a member of a large 
and world-wide family, and this particular genus has about fifty different species well 
known to science as being for the most part parasitic upon the bodies of insects— 
those found in New Guinea being remarkable for their gigantic size. A close and 
detailed examination of the terminal or fruit-bearing end of the stalk will be of great 
interest. With the aid of a small magnifying-glass it is seen to be covered with 
bead-like seeds, very much like the seed-bearing stalk of the common plantain grass. 
With the assistance of higher power these seed-vessels will be distinctly seen as 
small capsules (perithecia) attached to the stalk by vroot-hke threads. Some of 
the capsules will probably have a black spot on the top—the opening through 
which the spores have escaped. Under microscopical examination the capsule will be 
found to contain a large number of very small glassy tubes (asci) standing erect as 
if firmly fixed to the base of the cup. Such a remarkable phenomenon as a rush- 
like plant terminating in an animal tuber may well occasion surprise and suggest to 
the unscientific observer many theories to account for its origin and transformation. 
Some of the hypotheses invented to account for this natural paradox are both 
ingenious and amusing. It was affirmed to me with great confidence that perhaps 
the vegetable caterpillar itself is the origin of the vine which ultimately becomes the 
ereat rata tree, while another to whom I showed it, with equal emphasis said it was 
a freak of nature, or a mimetic form im imitation of the animal adopted by the plant 
for some inscrutable reason. One other opinion was that it was a “retrograde step in 
nature’—as if Nature started to make a caterpillar, but bungled in the process and 
turned it into a fungus. 
Hach little tube is, in turn, full of spores—minute rods or threads packed side by 
side and reaching from bottom to top of the tube; each thread is slightly curved in a 
spiral, which enables it to spring to a distance when released. 
Each spore is divided into segments like a string of beads; these are the ultimate 
seed-germs into which the string or spore breaks up when dry. ‘These final germs 
are, of course, infinitely microscopic, and when discharged from the capsule they are 
transported by the lightest wind until one of them finds a resting-place within the 
body of some caterpillar, where it completes the cycle of its existence. 
The number of capsules on one stalk will average about ten thousand. A capsule’ 
will contain about twenty tubes and each tube about a dozen spores, every one with 
at least eight germ segments; this will give the amazing total of somewhere about 
twenty million seed-germs as the product of each fungus. ‘There are two species of 
caterpillar liable to this disease, and at least one other fungus that attacks them in a 
similar manner. 
Specimens of this caterpillar may be found with two or three stalks growing from 
them, and branched stalks are by no means uncommon; I have found one with a stalk 
growing from each end. The fungus itself may be frequently found covered with another 
kind of fungoid growth, which may possibly be an intermediate stage in the growth of 
the same species. When the vegetable caterpillar is dug from the ground the substance 
is moist and pithy and the body of the insect appears large and full, but it shrinks 
and gets tougher as the specimen dries. That many caterpillars escape the ravages of 
the disease is obvious, or the race would become extinct in a single generation. I 
presume, therefore, that only a small proportion are thus attacked, and those in the 
affected district. 
