188 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cellar of the wine merchant, barring the door from within and 

 threatening summary eviction and what not ! Is it not a fearful 

 parasite which, having found lodging in the tissues of its unwill- 

 ing host, swells to proportions vast, a hidden tumor, sending its 

 human victim all too soon forth from his tenement of clay ? 



Even when not thus associated with the destruction of nobler 

 forms, fungi are nevertheless held suspect. At best and largest 

 they are odd, peculiar, hiding in out-of-the-way places, far from 

 " the warm precincts of the cheerful day " ; " off color," as men 

 say, and owing little or no allegiance to our sovereign sun ; pale, 

 ghastly things whose homes are with the dead. 



It remained for modern Science to dignify the world ; nothing 

 shall be stranger to her touch benign. Even the fungi come into 

 prominence as they come into light. Odd as they may appear and 

 mysterious too, they, like some odd and peculiar people, do greatly 

 improve upon acquaintance. Certainly no one can look in upon 

 a basket of Boleti fresh from August woods and not greatly 

 admire their delicate tints, their yellows, purples, browns, and 

 grays. Fungi, once for all, are plants, for the most part very sim- 

 ple ones too ; in their larger forms more commonly useful than 

 noxious, and positively sources of serious injury and detriment in 

 those species only which to mankind at large are unseen, unknown, 

 and unsuspected. To these reference will be made again ; for the 

 present let us consider such forms only as meet the eye of ordinary 

 observation, the common denizens of forest and of field. 



Assuming the vegetable nature of fungi, the most notable thing 

 about them, as compared with all surrounding vegetation, is their 

 color. Growing plants are green ; Whitney says the words are 

 synonymous. But whatever the colors fungi may take on, and 

 they are often brilliantly tinted, they are never green, at any rate 

 in the sense of possessing leaf -green. Without exception the fungi 

 are chlorophyl-less. This, though a negative quality, is, neverthe- 

 less, a very convenient one, and withal expressive, for it defines 

 exactly the place these plants must hold in the economy of nature. 

 Chlorophyl, as is well known, gives to ordinary plants their special 

 and peculiar ability, namely, the power to elaborate the most im- 

 portant organic products — starch, sugar, and the like. This power, 

 accordingly, the chlorophyl-less fungi have not. They are strictly 

 non-productive plants ; all that they have they receive. Likewise 

 bringing to the feast of life naught save appetite, they must needs 

 lay under contribution, living or dead, the whole organic world, 

 and are parasites or saprophytes according to their dietary habits. 

 Such as derive their nourishment from dead organic matter are 

 saprophytes, while those which assail living organisms, and derive 

 food-supply direct from the living tissues of living hosts, are prop- 

 erly enough called parasites. 



