FUNGI. 



189 



Somehow or other, through, sympathy perhaps, we are more will- 

 ing to pardon saprophytism than parasitism pure and simple, and 

 Nature apparently takes the same view of the case, for the sapro- 

 phytes include all the largest and finest specimens of the fungus 

 kind. Mushrooms, toadstools, earth-stars, puff-balls, stink-horns, 

 truffles, bracket-fungi, are nearly without exception saprophytes. 

 Such fungi, too, as we see, have won attention and enjoy something 

 of a popular classification. This classification science largely con- 

 firms — not wholly ; and it is interesting to notice that it is just 

 where the popular classification is weak that science fails to dis- 

 cover difference. Many a country wight and many an epicure as 

 well would deem it rare fortune could he learn to distinguish inva- 

 riably toadstools from mushrooms. Suppose we say that toad- 

 stools are poisonous while mushrooms are not. A toadstool, accord- 

 ingly, is a poisonous mushroom, and a mushroom is an edible toad- 

 stool. The only possible means, therefore, by which the two may 

 be distinguished is a test direct, as in the old rule which bids the 

 inquirer eat with the assurance that, if he survive, he has eaten a 

 mushroom ; if he die, a toadstool. But some species poisonous to 

 one person are by no means so to another ; so that even the rule 

 just quoted is unsatisfactory on the score of being inconclusive, as 

 well as inconvenient of application. Even Agaricus muscarius, 

 esteemed so very poisonous to ordinary mortals, is said to produce 

 in the Kamtchatkan simply an increase of that pleasing stupidity 

 which the Chinaman seeks in his opium-bowl or the American in 

 his beer. Furthermore, Science runs 

 her lines not as between toadstools and 

 mushrooms, but as between specific 

 forms. Poisonous and not poisonous, 

 edible and inedible, are side by side in 

 any enumeration of species. Let it be 

 once known which are edible species, 

 and these may thereafter be readily 

 recognized by any one competent to 

 discern a species — no easy matter, by 

 the way, even to the practiced student. 



So much for popular estimate and 

 classification. Let us now briefly con- 

 sider fungi from the standpoint of 

 structure, the true basis of classifica- 

 tion or distinction. A bit of mold 

 placed on the stage of our microscope 

 will enable us to make a beginning (Fig. 

 1). Here we have cells, of course, tubular in shape and disposed 

 to form thread-like branches in different directions. These 

 threads are known as hyphce., and fungi generally are masses of 



Fig. 1.— Fruit of Grben Mold 

 (Penicillium glaucum). 



