THE CHIGNON FUNGUS. 381 
they are wholly in antagonism with observed facts. 
Whilst scientific research has as yet afforded little insight 
of the habits of the lower forms of animal and vegetable 
life, the revelations of the microscope within the last few 
years are pregnant with significance as regards their 
ubiquity, and teach us that we are not to be astonished if 
we find living forms in unexpected sites, undergoing the 
most manifold variations in aspect when brought under 
the play of different influences. At the same time we 
have the amplest experience to caution us against the 
acceptance of new species without the keenest criticism. 
What, then, is the truth in this matter? In my devotion 
to the subject of diseases of the skin, it has lain in my 
way during the last ten years to investigate the whole 
subject of diseases of the hair connected with the devel- 
opment of vegetable parasites, and I think no one has 
made a larger number of microscopic observations. I 
have never seen a true gregarina in connection with the 
hair; but I have recently found a vegetable growth on 
false German hair answering in naked eye appearances to 
that described by Lindemann as little dark specks sur- 
rounding the hair towards its end. Gregarine, according 
to Lindemann, are made up of cells, which he states to be 
Vegetable, and it is possible that that which I have found 
may be identical with his gregarine. I cannot help 
thinking that many bodies totally dissimilar in nature 
have been classed with gregarine, which my friend Ray 
Lankester, than whom no higher authority on the point 
exists, declares to be truly animal. The growth I have 
found I now proceed to describe. | 
If you take a hair on which the parasite exists, and hold 
it between yourself and the light, towards the outer half 
you will see one or more, perhaps half a dozen, little dark 
