FUNGI. 295 
rate of an inch per hour. In the Polynesian 
Islands, so favourable to vegetable life are the 
climate and soil, that turnip, radish, and mustard- 
seed when sown show their cotyledon leaves in 
twenty-four hours ; melons, cucumbers, and pump- 
kins spring up in three days, and peas and beans 
in four. But swift as is this development of vege- 
tation in highly favourable circumstances, the 
rapidity of fungoid growth, under ordinary condi- 
tions, is still more astonishing. These plants 
usually form at the rate of twenty thousand new 
cells every minute. The giant puff-ball (Lycoper- 
don giganteum), occasionally to be seen in fields 
and plantations, increases from the size of a pea 
to that of a melon in a single night; while the 
common stinkhorn (Phallus tmpudicus) has been 
observed to attain a height of four or five inches 
in as many hours. Mr. Ward, in his work Ox the 
Growth of Plants in closely-glazed Cases, says of 
it: ‘I had been struck with the published accounts 
of the extraordinary growth of Phallus impudicus. 
I therefore procured three or four specimens in an 
undeveloped state, and placed them in a small 
glazed case. All but one grew during my tem- 
porary absence from home. I was determined 
not to lose sight of the last specimen ; and observ- 
ing one evening that there was a small rent in the 
volva, indicating the approaching development of 
