FLOWERLESS PLANTS. 343 
ing spores in the air may inseminate the mass. If to some 
they are improved, there is a species or condition of mould 
that I have every reason to believe is dangerous to persons 
of a consumptive predisposition. The black dust of hay 
fields ( Ustilago) acts in a more direct manner—hay makers 
are attacked by violent pains and swellings in the head and 
face, and great irritation of the entire system. The blue 
bread mould (Pencillium), or a condition of it is found on 
the inside of casks, the spores of which prove poisonous ; 
this is well illustrated by the two coopers who entered a 
great tun to clean off this mould, when they were seized with 
violent pains in the head, giddiness, vomiting and fever, 
scarcely escaping with their lives. 
Alluding to fungi on forests, fruits, shrubberies, grapes 
and grains, a passing word will not be amiss on the potato 
disease, caused by the Botrytis infestans; its ravages, how- 
ever, are too well known to this generation for particular 
details. Another, the B. bassiana, attacks the silk worm 
in China and Syria. The Achorion microsporon, Trico- 
phyton and Lychen agrius, are well known to attack man, 
to say nothing of the strong probability of their being the 
origin of malaria, typhus, cholera, and the plague, etc., be- 
sides numberless epidemics, which, at least, are preceded 
and unduly accompanied by these strange and often micro- 
scopic wonders of the vegetable kingdom. Unlike other 
plants the fungi in place of purifying the air—at least, so 
manifestly — from the poisonous carbonic acid and the other 
elements of injury, and giving us back the vital oxygen, 
steal away this, and shed on the shadowing wings of every 
dark corner of the earth an element, which, if it exceeded a 
tenth, would annihilate the race ; besides all this, they throw 
off hydrogen, which causes abrasions and sores—mostly of 
the mucus membranes and air passages ; and, finally, as we 
have seen in some cases, they exhale specific poisonous sub- 
stances; while myriads of spore-seeds so minute and light as 
to be scarcely less volatile than ether itself, are poured forth 
