938 FLOWERLESS PLANTS. 
and six to eight inches thick; this large species we have 
only seen attached to the living trunks of the Laurel Tree 
( Oreodaphne Californica). Its name signifying many pores, 
describes itself, the lower surface being a mass of little 
tubes or pores, angular like honey-comb. 
As tinder it makes a slow but sure fire and good coal, 
wind proof, so that as a slow match for blasting purposes it 
is perfectly safe. It burns at the rate of an inch in five min- 
utes; this rate, of course, will vary a little with thickness. 
Dipped in nitre and dried it is even more sure on gunpowder 
than fate itself. The corky kinds of fungi to which this 
belongs continue to live and increase for many years, al- 
though in general mere size is no reliable index of age in 
this field of inquiry, for we know that under favorable cir- 
cumstances the Scaly Polyporus (P. squamosus), found on 
the trunks of dead trees, attains, perhaps, the largest size of 
any known. Instances have been recorded of its measuring 
seven feet five inches in cireumference, and weighing thirty- 
four pounds avoirdupois, growing to these vast dimensions 
in the short space of three weeks. 
The power of these plants to disintegrate the hardest 
wood is very remarkable, causing it to yield much more rap- 
idly than the ordinary influences of the weather. Among 
the greatest agricultural obstacles in the vast timber clear- 
ings of the South and West, and indeed of most new coun- 
tries, are the old stumps, which, if left simply to the action 
of the weather, might be something less than half a century 
in decaying; yet if these were simply sprinkled with water 
in which fungi had been washed, they would shortly crumble 
beneath the magician’s wand, a mere shreddy mass of inter- 
laced cottony touchwood, the tissues and cells of which 
would be seen to be traversed and disorganized by this amor- 
phous mycelium. We know from actual observation that 
where heavily timbered land is required to be cleaned off 
entirely, it often costs from fifty to one hundred dollars per 
acre. Perhaps to estimate it in human flesh, we might adopt 
