waste of his time, to attempt to confute such self-destroying dogmas as
those of “spontaneous” or of “equivocal” generation, which last is only
a clumsy _équivoque_ expressive of the same thing: we might just as well
talk of the pendulum of a clock generating the time and space in which it
librated, as of dead matter spontaneously quickening and actuating those
new movements of which some of its particles have become the seat; for
how, in the name of common sense, can that which we assume to be dead,
_i. e._ emphatically and totally without life, convey such purely vital
phenomena as those of intus-susception and growth, which by the very
supposition are no longer within itself? Life, on such an hypothesis as
this, ceases to be the opposite and antagonist principle to death, of
which it then becomes but a different mode and a new phasis. It is not
the incomprehensibility of such a notion (be it well understood) against
which the objection lies, for as life begins and ends in mystery, that
would be no objection; it lies in the rashness of attempting to solve an
admitted mystery, by placing a palpable absurdity in its room; vainly
and irreverently arrogating to itself the honours of a discovery which
we are to believe if we can! At this rate, addled eggs, abandoned by the
vital principle, might take to hatching themselves! A more legitimate
and very interesting subject for inquiry is, whether those funguses
which are parasitical (_i. e._ derive their support from the structures
whence they emanate) are so many separate constituents of a superior
life _under analysis_, or each of itself a new individual? In support
of the first view, it is urged that since reproduction in such lower
existences is nothing but a modification of nutrition, a new process
might well originate from its perversion, and thus give rise to new
products; and just as the change in the ordinary nutrition of our bodily
organs is prone to give birth to various local disorganizations or morbid
growths, such, it is argued, might be the origin of fungoid growth on
trees. But then comes the difficulty: such a view does not, and plainly
cannot, explain the development of the _not_ parasitical kinds, of which
the origin should be the same; no, nor even of all that live by suction
at the expense of other plants, since there are as many kinds which
quicken in _dead_ and decaying structures, as there are that issue out
of decrepit and _living_ ones; here, then, it is plain that perverted
nutrition can have nothing to do with their production, for in this
case nutrition has, by the supposition, ceased; and to talk of disease
_after_ death would be a strange figure of speech indeed! An elm or oak
is frequently dead five, seldom less than three, years before these
parasitical growths make their appearance, from which it would appear to
follow that seeds are not developed by, but that they must be extraneous
to, and independent of, any pathological relation of the plant from which
they grow. If then fungus life be not to be sought for, and cannot with
propriety be said to originate in any morbid conditions of the tissues
from which they spring, whence do they derive life—in other words, whence
in every instance comes that particular seed which, when quickened, is
to produce after its kind? Lies this dormant for a season in those dead
and decaying tissues, which a little later the plant originating from it
is destined to embellish; or is the living germ first brought to them
by the winds, and merely deposited on their surface, as in a fitting
_nidus_ on which their future development is to be effected? Some writers
take one view, some another. Many believe the seeds of funguses to come
directly from the earth,[103] and to be drawn up with the sap, which,
as it penetrates throughout the tissues of the plant, must carry the
seeds also along with it. That such is actually sometimes the case is
certain, since we can not only plant parasitical blights of a particular
kind so as to infect particular plants, but may also by digging a trench
between those that have already become diseased, and those that are still
healthy, stay the progress of the blight—thus clearly establishing not
only the fact of seeds, but also the highly interesting additional one,
of their ascent into the structures of plants by intus-susception; and
to arrive at a general view from these particular cases, this would seem
to be the usual mode of their propagation. Neither does it make against
this view nor is it more in favour of the other, which supposes the germs
to be derived primarily from the air, and to be thence precipitated on
the structures where they grow, that funguses are found on organizations
in decay, on withered boughs, and on seared leaves, out of which all sap
must of course have been long ago exsiccated; for what then? though the
sap does, the seeds do not, evaporate with it. These, once absorbed and
diffused during the lifetime of the plant throughout its whole economy,
remain there in a state of potential activity, ready to burst forth
and germinate whenever the necessary conditions for these wonderful
changes shall be presented to them, just as though the seeds of corn
now flourishing in different parts of England, had first existed for
some thousand years as mummy wheat, potentially and unquickened. Nothing
perishes in nature: “destructio unius matrix alterius;” life may change
titles, but never becomes extinct; so soon as the more perfect plant
dies, a host of other vegetable existences, hitherto enthralled by laws
of an organization superior to their own, now that the connection has
been dissevered, put forth their separate energies, and severally assert
their independence. The poplar may have perished, root, stem, and branch,
but its extinction is only the signal for other existences, which had
been heretofore bound up and hid within its own, to assert themselves;
and accordingly a Polyporus sprouts out here; here a Thelephora
embellishes the dead bark; and here an Agaric springs out of the decaying
fibres of its head: these in turn also decay, but as they _moulder_ away
they languish into a new kind of fungous life, of an inferior type to
the last, as if their own vitality were inferior in kind to that of the
decayed poplar, whence they lately issued.[104] Thus, since the seeds
of funguses actually exist in great quantity in other plants, and since
they occur in the closed interior of fruits and in corollas which are
still in their envelopes (in either case out of the reach of the external
air); since finally, the _Pietra funghaia_, which produces a Polyporus
unknown to England, may be, notwithstanding, made to germinate in England
by furnishing the stone with adequate supplies of water and of heat,
_that_ seems the more tenable hypothesis of the two, which, in every
case, supposes the _nidus_ of the fungus to furnish the seed, and the
atmosphere, the conditions necessary for its quickening. How the seed is
first made to quicken is another and most interesting question, still
evolved in mystery. As there is no ocular evidence to be obtained of the
usual organs of sex, some mycologists have separated funguses from the
family of the clandestinely married _Cryptogamia_, to place them with the
_Agamia_, which repudiate the marriage tie;[105] but as every argument
from ignorance is unsafe, (and such would appear to be particularly the
case here, when we consider how many things undoubtedly exist, which the
imperfection of lenses and the circumscribed power of the eye prevent
our seeing,) we should rather make use of what is displayed to us in the
economy of other plants, in the way of analogy as applied to these, than
deny what is likely, merely because it is not an object of sense. It
would appear then, from what has been stated, that certain funguses are
produced like other plants, from seeds; and more likely at least, in the
parasitic kinds, that such seeds are derived by the plant which supports
them from the ground, than deposited from the atmosphere. Before we
proceed to the description of species, a few more words remain to be said
about these spores, and a brief notice to be taken of those parts that
are essential to all, and more especially of such as are characteristic
of those higher forms of funguses which are the more immediate subject of
the present work.
SPORES OR SEEDS.
All funguses have not seeds,—at least, seeds apparent to us;[106] but if
we reflect that these, even where visible, can do no more than present to
our senses the visible tabernacle of that life which is still invisible,
and which, not being material, must ever elude our search,[107] then it
will not appear so difficult to conceive that the apparently seedless
threads of some particular moulds should include, in their interior,
vital germs of some sort, which, being homogeneous with, or of the same
colour as, the parenchyma of the mould itself, are invisible—just as we
know them to be for a season in puff-balls, in the veins of truffles,
or in the _Agyrium_, the receptacle of which last breaks up, when ripe,
into sporidia, which then and not till then become manifest. The seeds
of funguses are called spores: in the great majority of cases, the
microscope, which brings their shapes under observation (for to the naked
eye they appear as dust), presents them to us as round, oval, oblong,
or even angular corpuscules, and, more rarely still, echinulate or with
a tail. They are as various in size as in shape, the first bearing no
proportion whatever to the dimensions of the future plant. They vary,
too, greatly in colour, being sometimes of a pure white, and continuing
so throughout the whole of their seminal existence; at other times, the
white acquires a yellow tinge on drying. Some are brown, some yellow,
some pink, some purple, some purple-black, and some pass successively
from pink to purple, and from purple to purple-black.[108] These seeds or
spores are sometimes naked, but are much more commonly shut up in little
pouches or receptacles, either of a regular or of an irregular shape;
the first are called _thecæ_, the latter _sporanges_; thecæ (which are
in shape similar to the cases of the same name that used to receive the
ancient εἱλίγματα, or scrolls) are small, cylindrical bodies, in which
the seeds lie _one over the other, as in a rouleau_; they are themselves
let into a _receptacle_ (or that part of the fungus the office of which
is to receive and support the reproductive organs) in a regular and
symmetrical manner, and at length occupy it completely. Not all are
prolific; for some, pressing upon others, cause them to abort, leaving
wherever this happens, sterile thecæ, or _paraphyses_, between those that
are fertile. _Sporanges_ are little globose or turbinated receptacles,
frequently furnished with a pedicle, in which the seeds lie without
order, as they are themselves inserted symmetrically, or without order,
into the receptacle. Sometimes these seeds are packed in series of fours,
as in the fimetary Agarics; in other genera, as in the Helvellæ and
Morels, they are stored away in series of eights. The spores, so soon as
they are ripe, either drop out of the sporiferous membrane (_hymenium_),
or, as more frequently happens, are projected from it with an elastic
jerk, or else, as is the case of Agarics of a deliquescent kind, return
to the earth mixed up with the black liquid into which these ultimately
resolve themselves. Sometimes the _whole_ external surface of the fungus
is dusted with seed; but much more frequently they are restricted to some
particular part, and either lie on the upper side, as in the _Pezizæ_,
or on that which is beneath, as in the mushroom. The spores generally
lie on the outside of the fungus, but in the puff-ball, as every one
knows, they are internal, and in such prodigious quantity as sometimes
entirely to fill its cavity. It is a speculation from Germany, that
spores are capable of altering their forms, and that according to the
accidents of climate or soil, they assume this or that type, and give
rise at different times to different kinds of funguses; on which it is
sufficient to remark, that while there is not the least foundation for
such an hypothesis, there is in fact much evidence against it; nature
acts by immutable laws and has no changelings. To appeal to experience,
when did mushrooms ever spawn toadstools? When was the _Pietra funghaia_
ever seen to bring forth anything but its own Polyporus? or the fig, the
poplar, or the hazel (when singed and watered to render them prolific)
exhibit any but their own particular mushroom? Spores are endowed, like
other seeds, with an extraordinary vitality, which may lie dormant in
them for an indefinite period; but unlike most other seeds, they seem
capable of resisting the prolonged heat of boiling water, infused in
which, and poured upon the ground, they are still capable of producing
each after its kind. The specific gravity of spores is greater than
that of water, as may be seen by placing a mushroom over a glass which
contains it, when, falling upon the surface, they presently subside to
the bottom. These spores sometimes merely multiply without any further
progress in development; sometimes they proceed a certain way only, and
then, the conditions necessary for their further advance failing, this is
arrested; sometimes, as in the _Sistotrema_, the plant _appears twice_
under a _perfect_ form, being for part of its existence a _Hydnum_,
and during the other half a _Boletus_; but, generally speaking, these
minute corpuscular bodies are destined to receive an infinite variety
of protean and imperfect forms, and to pass stage by stage, and step
by step, to the full attainment of that ultimate one which they assume
when their growth has reached its natural limits. Sometimes the spore
expands outright into a puff-ball; sometimes it shoots up straight into
a club, as in some of the Clavarias; or lies like a bowl, resupinate on
the ground and stalkless, as in the _Peziza_; in other cases, it assumes
the more perfect but much less simple forms of _Chanterelle_, _Boletus_,
_Dædalea_, _Morel_, or _Mushroom_.
DEVELOPMENT OF SEEDS.
The mode in which the organs immediately containing the seeds are formed,
differs according to the family. In the tribe of puff-balls, where the
seed is formed in the interior of the fungus, there is no hymenium; a few
of the internal cells (when the Lycoperdon has attained its full size)
begin to enlarge, and these in a short time are found to contain small
granules, generally of a determinate number, and moistened by a fluid
secreted from within the walls. In such funguses as have an hymenium
it is only some of the superficial cells, and these in a particular
position in reference to the receptacle, that contain seeds; though
perfect identity of structure throughout, is evinced in a conclusive
manner if we invert the head of a young fungus on its stalk; for then
these thecæ begin to form and to fill themselves with seed, not on the
side where they were about to do so previous to this inversion of the
head, but on that which was the uppermost and sterile surface, and which,
now that it is the undermost, has become prolific. The expansion of a
fungus, according to Vittadini, is effected as follows:—“These thecæ,”
of which we have been speaking, “as they swell, become distended with
the contained seed, and mostly so at their free extremity, since they
have more room for expansion in that direction than at the other, which
is impacted into the substance of the pileus; in consequence of this, a
series of wedges are formed which, as the seed continues to distend them,
force out the pileus, loosen its marginal connections with the stalk,
uncurl its involuted borders, and finally open up its cells, pores, and
sinuses.”[109]
In those subterranean funguses which mature their seeds below the surface
of the ground, the lower portion, so soon as this is accomplished in the
upper, suddenly takes to grow upwards, carrying along with it the bag,
which, on reaching the surface of the ground, bursts its envelopes and
scatters its prolific dust to the winds. All funguses, as has already
been observed, have in all probability spores, though in a few instances,
of byssoid growths, (Hyphas, Himantias, and Æthelias,) these are not
apparent; in most cases too, they are attached to an hymenium, into
which, or on the surface of which, they are placed till ripe. One very
large tribe, by far the largest, are called _Hymenomycetes_, from ὑμήν,
a membrane, and μύκος, a fungus; _i. e._ funguses with a seed membrane:
to distinguish them from those other kinds, very small numerically in
proportion to themselves, _Gasteromycetes_, in which the seeds, arranged
and stored away in particular receptacles, named sporanges or thecæ, are
with them included in the belly (γαστήρ) of the fungus, as is the case in
truffles and puff-balls. The hymenium, like that curiously doubled-down
sheet of paper which conjurors turn into so many shapes, assumes a great
variety of forms; running down the gills of the mushrooms and the plaits
of the _Cantharellus_, up into the tubes of the Boletuses; sheathing
the vegetable teeth of _Hydna_, forming an intricate labyrinth of
anastomosing plates in _Dædalea_; now rising into little rough eminences
on the surface of the _Thelephoræ_, and now affording a smooth investment
to that of the _Clavariæ_. It is covered with a veil, which disappears
so soon as the spores begin to ripen, and its protection is no longer
required; seen under the microscope, it appears to be wholly made up of
thecæ.
SUCCESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SPORES.
When the spore is to cease to be a spore, and to become a mushroom, the
first thing it does is to send forth certain cotton-like filaments,
whose interfacings entangle it completely while they also serve to
attach it to the place of its birth; these threads (like the spongioles
attached to the roots of phænogamous plants, whose name sufficiently
explains their office) absorb and bring nourishment to the quickened
spore, which then maintains itself entirely by intus-susception. All
this takes place before the germ has burst, or the embryo fungus begun
to develope its organs. In some instances, these elementary threads are,
like the ordinary roots of plants, spread out to a considerable distance
underground, forming here and there in their course small bulbs or
tubercles, each of which, in turn, becomes a new individual; in others,
and more commonly, these spores are sprinkled about unconnectedly, as
in the _Pietra funghaia_, affecting certain spots only, which become so
many small matrices whereof each furnishes a crop. The union of many
germinating granules together with their connecting threads, constitutes
mushroom spawn, or, as it is technically called, _carcytes_.[110]
Examined a short time after quickening, the spore is found to have
swelled out into a fleshy kernel; which in puff-balls, truffles, and the
uterine subterranean families generally, constitutes of itself the whole
fungus; this only grows in size afterwards, the substance and original
form remaining the same through the entire period of development. In
those destined to live under the influence of air and light, this same
rudimental nucleus gradually evolves _new parts_, and assumes, as we
have seen, a vast variety of forms, (whereof each particular one is
predetermined by the original bias imprinted upon every spore at its
creation,) and here there is a manifest analogy with the progressive
development of new parts in the higher plants. In such funguses as are
wrapped up in a volva or bag, during the earliest period of growth,
this furnishes them not only with the means of protection, but of
nourishment also. This volva, which is formed by the mere swelling
out of the original fleshy bulb, when it has grown to a certain size,
exhibits towards its centre the rudiments of the young fungus; of which
the receptacle appears first, and all the other parts in succession. The
embryo, next taking to grow, in its turn approaches the circumference of
the volva, which, having by this time ceased to expand, is burst open,
and sometimes with much violence, by the emerging Amanite. As soon as
the hymenium has parted with its seed, which falls from it in the form
of fine dust, the fungus, collapsing, either withers on its stem, or
else dissolves into a black liquid and so escapes to the earth. In such
funguses as have not a volva, the basilar or primary nucleus shoots up
at once in the form of a cone, and a little later presents at its apex
the rudiments of a receptacle or head; by degrees, and frequently by slow
degrees,[111] the perfected structures of the plant are elaborated and
spread themselves out into some of the forms mentioned above, of which
the clavate is the most simple, and that with gills the most complex.
The primary nucleus is formed out of simple cellular membrane, the
cells of which, at first elongating, and at length uniting into little
bundles, assume a fibrous appearance; sometimes these fascicular bodies
effuse themselves unchanged into the substance of the receptacle, in
which they spread out and are lost; at others, a transverse line makes
the demarcation between the pileus and stem.[112] The last part formed
in a fungus, generally, is that which bears the seed; and whenever an
exception to this occurs, and the seed is formed at an earlier period
than usual, nature has in this case provided three membranes, to cover
and protect these delicate organs till the plant shall have attained
maturity: these are the ring (_annulus_), the veil (_velum_), and the
wrapper (_volva_).
OF THE ANNULUS, THE VELUM, AND THE VOLVA.
Of these involucra the first two are partial, the other universal. The
Volva is a thick membranaceous covering, originating at the base of the
fungus, which it thus connects with the earth, and furnishes, during
its fœtal life, with the means of support and nourishment. When this
has ceased, and the plant has quitted its wrapper, if this still adhere
to the base of the stalk, it is styled manifest (_manifesta_), but if
there be no traces of it left, obliterated (_obliterata_). It is _free_
when it can be easily detached, and _congenital_ when it cannot without
laceration. In funguses with bulbous roots it is congenital, in those
without bulbs it is free. All funguses that have a volva are of course
_volvati_, but as this organ exists in many only so long as they are
underground, mycologists are agreed to restrict the term to such alone as
retain it afterwards.
_The Ring._—This, which differs considerably in form, substance, and in
its attachments, is composed either of a continuous sheet of membrane
or else of a number of delicately-spun threads, resembling a spider’s
web,[113] which in either case passing from the margin of the pileus
to the corresponding upper portion of the stem, give way as the plant
expands, and either festoon for a season the margin of the cap, or
encircle the stalk with a ring. The marginal remains of the Annulus are
extremely fugacious, but the ring round the stalk, though generally
transitory, is sometimes persistent; it is _superior_ or _descending_
when originating from the summit of the stem, it descends outwards and
downwards to form connections with the rim of the pileus; _inferior_ or
_ascending_ when, coming off from that portion of the stalk which is
below the pileus, it ascends to attach itself to this. In a few cases the
ring is partly membranaceous and partly composed of radiating arachnoid
threads.
_The Veil._—Some funguses not only present the ring just mentioned, their
hymenium or seed membrane being further protected from harm by a second
investment, the veil, _Velum_, the stalk origin of which, when existing
in conjunction with an annulus, is below it, but when the fungus is not
annulate, the velum rises higher up on the stalk, stretches across to
meet and is afterwards reflected over the whole surface of the pileus; on
the expansion of the Agaric this investment is entirely broken up, and
exhibits those well-known flocks, which have been called by the learned
_verrucæ_, but which, as they are generally of a dirty leprous hue, and
affect more or less of a circular arrangement, have procured for this
whole tribe of Amanites in Italy the uncomely epithet of _tignosi_,
or scald-heads. Where there has been both a volva and a velum, as
sometimes happens in the same fungus, these verrucæ are of different
colours according as they are remnants of the first merely, or of both
together.[114] The velum in the subgenus _Limacium_ is a slimy coating
adhering to the head of the fungus, which then looks as if it had been
dipped in gum mucilage; this generally disappears after a time, leaving
the epidermis dry, though sometimes, like the solid membranaceous veil,
it is more or less persistent. The waxy covering on the pileus of the
_Ag. virescens_, which after a time cracks and tessellates its surface,
is only an exudation limited to the upper portion of the cap, and not a
veil.
_The Stalk._—This, which is absent in many parasitical funguses of the
Order _Pileati_, when present, either effuses itself uninterruptedly
into the substance of the pileus, which it then, in fact, _forms_, or
else supports merely as on a pillar, a distinct line of demarcation
showing where the fibres terminate. It assumes a great variety of forms,
which serve in many instances to characterize species; besides which
peculiarities there are others to be noted, as the mode of its insertion
into the pileus, its having or not having a ring, the circumstance of its
being scabrous, glossy, or tomentose, reticulated, spotted, or striped,
of one colour above and another below, or of its changing colour when
bruised, any of which may sometimes assist our diagnosis.
_The Pileus._—By far the larger number of funguses mentioned in this
work have a pileus, or cap; all such belong to the first great tribe
_Pileati_; they include the genera _Agaricus_, _Boletus_, _Cantharellus_,
_Morchella_, _Hydnum_, _Fistulina_, and _Polyporus_, each of which
furnishes its quota of alimentary species, together with many others not
esculent. The form of the pileus, like that of the stalk, is various in
these different genera, besides being variable in the different species
of the same genus; generally it assumes an orbicular or umbrella shape,
especially in such funguses as grow solitary on the ground, whilst in
others, parasitical on trees, (particularly when they have no stalk,) it
is more or less of a half-hemisphere.