CHAPTER V. 

 THE FUNGUS BODY. 



Fungi are plants without the green coloring matter chloro- 

 phyll (see ^ 6), whose body is generally made up of long 

 filaments, either loosely or densely interwoven and united. 



40. Origin. — As the bacteria (see ^ 14), the smallest and 

 simplest plants, were probably derived from the lowest algae 

 by slowly adapting themselves to get ready-made food, so, at 

 various times in the past and therefore at various points in 

 the ascending scale of algal life, certain algae have adapted 

 themselves to the use of food which they could secure from 

 other beings. Then, having no use for the chlorophyll and 

 chloroplasts, they have gradually lost them. The adoption 

 of the habit has proved highly successful, both among the 

 simple bacteria and the more highly organized true fungi. 

 The ancestors of the present species were — how long ago no 

 one can say — probably at first chiefly, if not exclusively, 

 aquatic. Some, at the present time, have the same habit, 

 growing in infusions of organic matter. Others attach them- 

 selves to dead or even living animals or plants in the water. 

 The bodies of dead or living organisms furnish places of growth 

 for a great number of species which have adapted themselves 

 to other than aquatic life. Many live in the soil because it 

 contains in its upper layers more or less organic matter from 

 the offal of plants and animals, or from their dead bodies. 



41. Hyphse. — The filaments of which the fungus body is 

 composed are called hyphse. Each is the result of growth 



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