294 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
more or less of a verdigris tint, and does not ap- 
pear to be owing to the action of light and oxygen 
upon the contents of the cells. 
Another of the remarkable peculiarities of the 
fungi is the extreme rapidity of their growth, a 
peculiarity more frequently to be seen among the 
lowest forms of animal life than among plants, 
They seem special miracles of nature, rising from 
the ground, or from the decaying trunk of the tree, 
full-formed and complete in all their parts in a 
single night, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter, 
or the armed soldiers from the dragon’s teeth of 
Cadmus, sown in the furrows of Colchis. It has 
long been known that the growth of fungi takes 
place with great rapidity during thundery weather, 
owing, in all probability, to the nitrogenized pro- 
ducts of the rain which then falls. One is sur- 
prised after a thunderstorm in the beginning of 
August, or a day of warm, moist, misty weather, 
such as often occurs in September, to see in the 
woods thick clusters of these plants, which had 
sprung into existence in the short space of twenty- 
four hours, covering almost every decayed stump 
and rotten tree. In tropical countries, stimulated 
by the intense heat and light, the rapidity of 
vegetable growth is truly astonishing; the stout 
woody stem of the bamboo-cane, for instance, 
shooting up in the dense jungles of India at the 
