1882-1883.] i85 



The sixth meeting was held in the Museum on Tuesday 

 evening, 20th March— Mr. W. H. Patterson, M.R.I.A., in the 

 chair — when a paper was read by the Rev. H. W. Lett, M.A., 

 T.C.D., on " Fungi, Mushrooms, and Toadstools — Disease, 

 Blight, and Food-producing Plants." 



The reader commenced by saying that very few persons 

 know anything about fungi, beyond the taste of mushrooms 

 and the effects of blue-mould and blight. This ignorance is due 

 to scarcity of literature on the subject, which Berkely, Badham, 

 Cooke, and Worthington Smith have done much to remove, by 

 publishing books of information in popular style. There is 

 comparatively- little about fungi in floras of 80 years ago. 

 Withering could only enumerate 564 species. Since that time, 

 owing to the improvements in microscopes and investigations, 

 3,000 British fungi have been described, while more than 20,000 

 are known to the scientific world. But still there is no Irish 

 flora that even mentions them, and the excellent guide book 

 of the B.N.F.C. has but one line of type referring to them. So 

 varied are fungi that it is impossible to give an abstract definition 

 of a fungus that would apply to every form. They may be 

 described as cryptogamic plants, composed of minute cells. 

 They differ from other plants in not requiring light, in not 

 producing chlorophyll, and in absorbing oxygen and evolving 

 carbonic acid gas. They are found everywhere and on every- 

 thing. They resemble the flesh of animals in containing a large 

 proportion of albuminous principles, and they produce nitrogen 

 in larger quantities than any other plants. Some of them, like 

 the lowest order of animals, have a luminous quality. One, 

 called Corticiim coeruleum^ very common in this country, grows 

 in bright blue patches on dead wood ; it is luminous in the dark, 

 and has originated many a tale of ghost and goblin dread. 

 Fungi have also a remarkable power of reproducing and repairing 

 such parts of their substance as have been injured. Although 

 capable of universal dissemination, it is curious that in tropical 

 forests, where we might expect to find them in the greatest 



