31 
Having examined these bodies in alcohol alone with more 
care, I had no doubt that they were the true spores removed 
from their attachment by the action of washing. I have 
yet to see these spores in situ. 
The slides I present to the cabinet of the Section will 
show that the diseased hairs are covered by nucleated cells, 
square, attached end to end, and branching in all directions. 
This is the mycelium, or what I hold to be the true parasitic 
plant. It possesses the same relation to the spore that a 
tree does to its seed, and, if we keep this in view, the life- 
history in the main of most, if not all, these plants becomes 
easily understood. The full and complete life-history, which 
must include of necessity the mode in which reproduction 
takes place in plants so minute as these, requiring ^in. object 
glass even to see them, will probably long remain unwritten, 
but analogy leads us to expect that at some period of the 
life of these plants, and in some way or other, a true sexual 
process of reproduction does take place. 
There is no doubt that the spores, which you will see on 
the slides presented, give existence to the mycelium, and 
then this again produces filaments bearing the spores. These 
filaments must not be confounded with the mycelium. The 
cells of these filaments having very different characters. 
Infection or contagion (one or both) will then take place 
whenever the spores find a resting place upon the skin of 
animals in that condition of health suited for their develop- 
ment. In the cases that came immediately under my notice 
the worst occurred where bodily health was impaired, 
whereas contagion did not take place in one instance, even 
though the boy slept regularly with his brother for months 
during the continuance of the disease. 
I was quite unable to obtain mycelium from the skin of 
the face in the case of the adult. The disease travelled all 
over the face, leaving the beard and whiskers unattacked ; 
but although the hair folicle of the upper lip was filled with 
mycelium, I could not get it from the skin. 
