346 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
fungi, with the caterpillars attached to them, is 
placed in the stomach of a duck, which is then 
roasted and eaten by the patient as a cure for in- 
ternal complaints. There is a peculiar disease 
called muscardine, affecting the silk-worm in Syria 
and China, before they have woven their cocoons, 
which sometimes proves fatal to thousands of these 
delicate creatures. It not unfrequently happens 
that the silk-grower loses his whole stock of worms 
from this cause alone. This disease is caused by 
the mould-like filaments of the Botrytis basstana. 
These filaments grow with great rapidity within 
the body of the animal they attack, not only at 
the expense of its nutritive fluids, but after its 
death ; all the interior soft tissues appear to be 
converted into a solid mass of mycelium, from 
which arise one or more aérial receptacles of the 
spores. It sometimes happens that the caterpillar 
is only partially affected by this fungoid growth, 
or only to such an extent as not to destroy the 
organs immediately essential to its life, in which 
case it may pass through its metamorphosis into 
the imago state, and become a butterfly or a moth, 
with the lower portion of its body filled with a 
mass of fungoid substance as above described. 
According to Pasteur, muscardine is now very rare, 
but of late years a far more formidable scourge, 
called Pebrine, on account of the black spots which 
