296 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
the plant, I watched it all night, and at eight in 
the morning the summit of the pileus began to 
push through the jelly-like matter with which it 
was surrounded. In the course of twenty-five 
minutes it shot up three inches, and attained its 
full elevation of four inches in one hour and a half. 
Marvellous are the accounts of the rapid growth 
of cells in the fungi; but, in the above instance, it 
cannot for a moment be imagined that there was 
any increase in the number of cells, but merely an 
elongation of the erectile tissue of the plant.’ The 
force developed by this rapid growth and increase 
of the cells of fungi is truly astonishing. Mon- 
sieur Bulliard relates that, on placing a fungus 
within a glass vessel, the plant expanded so 
rapidly that it shivered the glass to pieces, with 
an explosive detonation as loud as that of a pistol ; 
while Dr. Carpenter, in his Elements of Physiology, 
mentions that ‘in the neighbourhood of Basing- 
stoke, a paving-stone, measuring twenty-one inches 
square, and weighing eighty-three pounds, was 
completely raised an inch and a half out of its bed 
by a mass of toad-stools, of from six to seven 
inches in diameter ; nearly the whole pavement of 
the town being heaved up by the same cause.’ 
Every one has heard of the portentous growth of 
fungi in a gentleman’s cellar, produced by the de- 
composing contents of a wine cask, which, being 
