PLANT DISEASES 189 
deaux mixture helps to control the trouble, but several ap- 
plications are necessary. 
PROJECTS AND QUESTIONS 
1. Mushrooms, toadstools, and puffballs. — Bring several of these 
to school and tell your class where they were found. It should be easy 
to find them in the fall near barns, in meadows, or any damp place. They 
are large fungi. Notice the parts: an umbrella-like part or 
cap, a sort of stem, and some fibers running into the ground. 
Take the cap of one of your specimens, place it with gills 
down upon a piece of clean paper, cover with a glass or jar, 
and leave it for a day. Some spores will be set free and 
fall on the paper where you can see them very plainly. If 
the mushroom is one that has white spores, those will show 
best if colored paper is used. 
2. Mold. — Moisten a piece of stale bread slightly, put it 
in a tumbler, and keep covered. In about a week the bread 
will probably have mold upon it. Mold is a fungus and 
affords a very convenient example for study. (1) Note the 
mass of fine white threads that take the place of stems, roots, 
and leaves of higher plants. Do any of the threads pene- 
trate the bread? (2) Notice the black specks on the ends 
of some of the threads. These are spore cases and if you 
touch them gently with a pin they may burst open and a 
shower of minute spores come out. The unripe spore cases eae 
are white. A magnifying glass will enable you to see these Spor 
things more plainly. (3) Moisten another piece of bread 
and with a small stick transfer some of the spores to that, planting them 
in rows. Invert a tumbler over this bread and after forty-eight hours 
examine it. Has the mold formed? This time you planted the spores 
on the bread, but where did they come from in the case of the first 
piece? Why do you think that stale bread is used rather than fresh 
bread ? 
3. Infecting with germs of decay. —'Take a rotten apple and a sound 
one. Stick a pin a third of the way into the rotten apple and then into 
the sound apple, repeating the operation in several places. Lay the 
