HABITATS. 247 
sembles the drone, both in size and colour, more than any other 
English insect. In the month of May it buries itself in the 
earth and begins to vegetatc. By the latter end of July, the 
tree is arrived at its full growth, and resembles a coral branch, 
and is about three inches high, and bears several little pods, 
which, dropping off, become worms, and from thence flics, like 
the English caterpillar.” Zorrubia Taylori, which grows from 
the caterpillar of a large moth in Australia, is one of the finest 
examples of the genus. Torrubia Robertsii, from New Zealand, 
has long been known as attacking the larva of Hepialus 
virescens. There are several other species on larve of different 
insects, on spiders, ants, wasps, é&c., and one or two on mature 
Lepidoptera, but the latter seem to be rare. 
That fungi should make their appearance and flourish in 
localities and conditions genera!ly considered inimical to vegetable 
life is no less strange than true. We have already alluded to 
the occurrence of some species on spent tan, and some others 
have been found in locations as strange. We have seen a yellow 
mould resembling Sporotrichum in the heart of a ball of opium, 
also a white mould appears on the same substance, and more 
than one species is troublesome in the opium factories of India. 
A mould made its appearance some years since in a copper 
solution employed for electrotyping in the Survey Department 
of the United States,* decomposing the salt, and precipitating 
the copper. Other organisms have appeared from time to time 
in various inorganic solutions, some of which were considered 
destructive to vegetable life, and it is not improbable that some 
of these organisms were low conditions of mould. It may well 
occasion some surprise that fungi should be found growing 
within cavities wholly excluded from the external air, as in the 
hollow of filberts, and the harder shelled nuts of Guilandina, in 
the cavities of the fruit of tomato, or in the interior of an egg. 
It is scarcely less extraordinary that Hypocrea inclusa should 
flourish in the interior of a kind of truffle. 
From the above it will be concluded that the habitats of fungi 
are exceedingly variable, that they may be regarded as almost. 
* Berkeley’s ‘‘ Outlines,’’ p. 30. 
