
296 MUSHROOMS. 
plants on the same level with other and higher forms, which 
embrace among our garden vegetables wild states of severl i 
equally poisonous and of many plants beside, often mis 
for harmless ones, ending, if used, in fatal results. i 
About eight years ago appeared the Rey. Dr. Badhams — 
valuable work on the “Esculent Funguses of England,” with ] 
drawings of the species colored after nature, and defining — 
their localities, uses, and importance ; indicating attention in 
the right direction to this subject, and followed shortly after 
by the little treatise whose title stands at the head of this 
article. To understand the arrangement and classification of | 
the fungi requires a careful study of the systematic treatises — 
` of such botanists as have made them a specialty, and to give 
even an idea of such systems would be out of place here. 
Yet some peculiarities noticed by our author may not eae 
wholly devoid of interest. “To say that fungi may be found 
everywhere, would not perhaps be literally true; but to si 
where they are not found under any circumstances would be 
puzzling, —every rotten stump or twig, every decaying leat 
or fruit, has its peculiar species, —some large enough ue : 
tract immediate attention, others so small as to be invisill® — 
to the unaided eye.” (p. 3. : 4 
Of these latter may be mentioned, as confirmatory of tha ] 
statement, the parasitic fungus, which destroys by 4 -r d 
consumptive disease the life of the common House-fly ( a 
rendonema musca) ; and the Botrytis bassiana, which inlet 
the silk-worm ; the mother of beer and vinegar is the my ‘ 
ium * of other species; and similar mycoderms* riot in? l 
Ìnkstand, and even in pharmaceutical preparations ; the de 
caying hoofs and horns of animals, and the feathers of 4 
produce their particular kinds; the lungs of water-fowl a 
attacked by others; the skin of fishes, and the eggs of 8" 
and frogs are destroyed by parasitic fungi. Nosu 4 
escapes their visits, and eyen iron hardly cooled has ea 1 
found invested in a few hours with fungoid threads. a 
* Conditi rA os 

pe A hinh 
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