254 Tlie Fungus Foot of India. 



notice, and which, though at first apparently so different, are 

 closely connected with the fungus of the first form. 



The foundation of these bodies, of which one is represented, 

 slightly magnified, at fig, 2, consists of one or more large 

 mother-cells filled with a mass of daughter- cells as represented 

 in the plate at p. 256 (fig. b, c). These are clothed externally 

 with a radiating growth assuming a vast variety of forms, some 

 only of which are here represented from Dr. H. J. Carter's 

 sketches. The structure often so exactly simulates that of 

 minute moulds, that it is very difficult to get rid of the notion 

 that they are really vegetable growths. Pure sulphuric ether, 

 however, dissolves them completely, and shows that they are 

 merely different forms assumed by stearine. Sometimes the 

 white mass consists of straight slender threads radiating in 

 every direction, each of which is surmounted by an elliptic 

 spore-like body (fig. 3), or by a regular globe (fig. 4), while 

 occasionally the threads or crystals are shorter and the globe 

 irregular (fig. 5). Sometimes the globules are absent, and in 

 one case the fundamental cell budded like the receptacle of an 

 aspergillus (fig. e, p. 256) ; each new cell being separated by an 

 articulation and supported on a short stalk, as represented in the 

 plate. Sometimes the outer coat consists of regularly dicho- 

 tomous or trichotomous fascicles of linear crystals, which are 

 free above (fig. 6) ; sometimes, on the contrar}^, the fascicles 

 are dilated above with ciliaiy processes (fig. 7), or occasionally 

 lobed (fig. 8) ; while occasionally there are straight radiating 

 bodies surmounted by a globular mass, pierced and surrounded 

 by cilia, after the manner of volutella (fig. 9). Another form 

 appears under the guise of little feathers (fig. 10), while a not 

 unfrequent one consists of leaf-like, oblong, strongly acuminate 

 scales, simulating the leaves of mosses (fig. 11). The founda- 

 tion is, however, in every case an organized cell, the red colour 

 of whose daughter- cells is precisely that of the oidioid thread of 

 the black fungus. Whatever maybe thought of the second and 

 third forms of vegetable growth, this, at least, must be consi- 

 dered as identical with the first, though at present the Chionyphe 

 has not been raised from its globules, which, however, are so 

 closely involved in stearine, that their germination is scarcely 

 probable. 



Dr. H. V. Carter has in his second memoir entered at some 

 length into the probable mode of introduction of the evil, but as his 

 observations depend mainly on the erroneous reference by Corda 

 of the genus iEcidium to the group of Myxogastrous fungi, the 

 spores of which in germinating frequently put on the characters 

 of such infusoria as amoeba, and whose subgelatinous spawn con- 

 sists of a substance analogous to, if not identical with, the 

 sarcode of Dujardin, it is not necessary to follow him on this 



