14 



PINACE^. 



and every case where firs and pines are attacked or infested by this 

 class of their enemies, it will be found that one or other of the follow- 

 ing causes have been in operation, and must be removed before the 

 enemies can be eradicated. It may be that the trees are growing upon 

 land more or less imperfectly drained, or, perchance, surcharged with 

 water or stagnant moisture ; or that the trees, not being properly 

 thinned, are growing too closely together upon the ground, thereby 

 more or less excluding those essential requirements, light and air ; or 

 there may be too much undergrowth amongst them ; and if any or all 

 of these causes exist, it is only to be expected that any fir or pine, or any 

 plantation, great or small, remaining under such conditions for any 

 length of time, will, sooner or later, and in a more or less degree, 

 get overrun and infested by these parasites. "WTierever such enemies 

 are found, the land must be made sweet and healthy by efficient drain- 

 age, the trees properly thinned, and the undergrowth cleared away so 

 as to allow sufficient of light, heat, and air, without which no fir nor 

 pine, more than man or animal, can for any length of time exist, much 

 less continue to develope itself in any perfect health ; and just in the 

 ratio that these essentials to health are supplied or withheld, will be 

 the health or premature decay of the trees, and their consequent escape 

 from, or attack by these parasitical enemies ; for wherever the pine 

 tribe are in sweet and healthy soils, and are properly thinned and at- 

 tended to in their cultivation in plantations, little fear need ever be 

 entertained of their being attacked or infested in any appreciable 

 degree by this class of their enemies. 



It is not so, however, with what I term the Internal Fnngoids, for 

 here I include those curious, most eccentric and mysterious formations 

 of doubtful character. Fungi^ — the lowest order of vegetable life, 

 simple or compound, copulate or spontaneous they may be : some of 

 them good for food, others the most deadly poisons to animal or 

 vegetable : many of them, in their structure and affinity, as yet but 

 imperfectly defined. Here I enter upon one of those most inviting and 

 delightful, yet, dangerous paths of research and investigation into natural 

 philosophy, which lead to nature's founts, to which she is constantly 

 beckoning us onward, in our pursuit of knowledge under difficulties ; 

 which, in passing, we may affirm with Hamlet, contain more things 

 " than are dreamt of in our philosophy." Fungi ! what are they 1 where 

 are they ? and from whence came they ? a triad of queries which who 

 shall answer? I divine not; my own investigations, however, into 

 this obscure branch of natural science, have led me to the belief that 



