4oo The Museum Gazette 



liable to its attacks because they were sickly ? We had 

 supposed that melleus grew only on dead or dying stumps. Is 

 it really a fact that it attacks living and healthy trees, and if 

 so why do not many more trees suffer ? We have none of us 

 ever before seen this fungus flowering out high up on the stem 

 of a healthy tree. In the present instance no other tree in the 

 wood except this dead one shows it. We have searched the 

 wood carefully. 



Professor : I admit there is much in what you say. Many 

 fungals live neither on living trees nor on rotten trees, but on 

 those which have only recently died and which still have in 

 their substance the remains of sap. Like connoisseurs in 

 game, their prey must be dead and on the verge perhaps of 

 decomposition, but not absolutely rotten. Some of them, I 

 fear, do not wait till death is quite complete and of them very 

 probably melleus is one. Stereum Mrsutum is certainly one. 

 You may remember the fine demonstration of this which you 

 found for me on an oak in this very wood two years ago. 

 It flourished on a bough not long dead, and now the fungus 

 itself is dead also. 



Might we say that these fungi live as long as there is any 

 food which they can eat, and die when the store is ex- 

 hausted ? They cannot, like the fungals of the fairy rings, 

 migrate outwards in ever-enlarging circles, for the tree boughs 

 do not give them room. 



Professor : That would probably be very near the truth. 



We are really very much obliged to you and we hope you 

 will not think us impertinent if we ask you to show us melleus 

 growing on a living tree. Some of us had heard you say in a 

 former walk that it is a dangerous fungus, and we looked it 

 up in Berkeley and found that he says simply "on dead 

 stumps," nor can we find it on any other. 



Professor : I am only too glad that you have had sufficient 

 zeal to look into the matter. You will find in the end that 

 I am right. It is a most interesting question as to how it has 

 got to this tree. If it has obtained access by the roots it 



