OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA. 
]3 
The spores of many of the puff-balls are spherical in shape and in the 
neighbourhood of 1/5,000 of an inch in diameter. Some are perfectly smooth, 
others rough. It sometimes happens that smooth spherical bodies of about this 
size are required for some purpose and such fungi suggest a source that may 
serve this end. Such small bodies offer much resistance to the downward pull 
of gravity, and consequently fall relatively slowly. Bui lor has shown that the 
spores, usually elliptical, of some agarics resembling the common mushroom fall 
about an inch a minute in a perfectly still atmosphere. Any little disturbances 
in the air, such as convection currents, blow the spores about in all directions, 
so that in the air of an ordinary room spores may remain suspended probably 
for hours, and some, instead of falling to the floor, may be found to have settled 
cm pictures or the ventilators near the ceiling. During the great influenza 
epidemic it was desired to know to what extent very minute dry particles might, 
be inhaled into the lungs, particles represented by droplets of saliva or sputum 
coughed into his surroundings by a patient suffering from the pneumonic form 
of influenza. Such particles, containing perhaps the living virus of the disease, 
would soon lose their moisture and, being very small, would like tobacco smoke 
be wafted hither and thither by currents of air. Though the spores of puff-balls 
were many times larger than these minute dried droplets of influenza spray, the 
spores being easily recognisable were chosen to ascertain with wliat rapidity 
minute particles could reach the deepest recesses in the lungs, the little terminal 
spaces or alveoli where the work of oxygenating the blood is carried out. Tt is 
held by many that the air in the utmost recesses is changed but slowly, and 
consequently small particles are not likely to reach them by inhalation, becoming 
glued to the mucus on the narrow passages leading to them. A monkey had a 
puffball pinched in front of its nose and was killed within a minute of this 
procedure. Even in this short space of time, a few spores had reached the alveoli 
where they were microscopically recognised. 
The spores of mushrooms have served detective purposes for public health ends. 
Some years ago in Sydney, burnt almonds were exposed for sale in a shop window 
in which mushrooms were also displayed. Specks on the sweets were believed 
to be due to the excreta of cockroaches, which abounded. Mushroom spores were 
recognised in the specks by their colour, shape, and size, and were also found in 
the alimentary canal of the cockroaches. In consequence of this undesirably 
deterioration of the food, the burnt almonds were seized and destroyed, even 
though their consumption would not' have been likely to injure health, unless 
these same cockroaches had had access also, as they might have had, to other 
definitely deleterious materials. 
The size, shape, and colour of the spores of any particular species are so 
constant, uniform, and characteristic that it has been suggested that they might 
be incorporated in an ink as a further protection against forgery as in the 
Coprinvs “ink” used bv Bulliard and recommended by Boudier for this purpose. 
It is also possible that they may be of use for police purposes. If a constable, 
attempting to arrest several resisting men in a melee, could mark these persons 
by discharging an “ink pistol” at them, the likelihood of their being captured, 
when reinforcements arrived or before they could slink off to their haunts and 
get rid of the clothes and wash themselves, would be increased. If the Indian 
or other special ink employed was impregnated with particular fungus spores, 
from different species for each police officer, then not only could the stain in the 
clothing be recognised as a police stain, but the constable who had caused it 
could he ascertained. 
PINE SEEDLINGS AND FUNG'US GROWTH. 
It is known that some plants, such as epiphytal orchids, are dependent, during 
part of their development at least, on the association in their roots of fungus 
hyphae with the orchid tissues. The fungi concerned in this process rarely 
belong to the division with which we are dealing.* Simitar symbioses between 
vascular plants and fungus hyphae occur in other families, such as the true 
heaths, and have been described by the late Professor Lawson of Sydney in the 
prothalli of the Lyeopodiaeeous genera TmefapterUt and Psilotim. The' nodules 
in the roots of so many species of legumes, many of them Australian, are 
* The Japanese Kusnno has found the hyphae o.f ArmilUn'in miellen associated with the 
flowering- t-uher of the orchid (Utstrudio, elaUi BI. ,1. mvllett, the Honey-Fungus, a white- 
spornl Agaric, is found in this and the other States. A species of rfitstrodio ’occurs in 
Now Sotatll Wales. 
