[102] On digging up the earth in the neighbourhood of a ring in which A. prunulus was at the time growing, I found the mould to the depth of a foot and more, hoary, with an arachnoid spawn strongly charged with the odour of this mushroom. Persoon found that to destroy a fairy-ring of the same Agaric, it was necessary to dig to a considerable depth, when the next crop that came up was disseminated sporadically over the ground.
[103] This was the opinion of the Greeks, who called funguses γηγενεῖς, or earthborn.
[104] Just as in the inorganic world, chemical analysis is frequently the precursor of new forms of matter resulting from the new affinities which take place, so when a vegetable dies, and the synthesis of its structural arrangement is broken up, nature frequently avails herself of this season of decomposition, to bring new individuals out of the decaying structures of the old, which, in consequence of a beautiful pre-arrangement, find there all the requisite supplies for their growth and future maintenance.
[105] Some mycologists however, as Persoon and Roques, conceive that the common dust of puff-balls is analogous to the pollen of the higher plants, while the real seed is to be sought and found in a finer dust, which is entangled in the reticular meshes at the base of these plants. Others suppose the fluid which bathes the interiors of those little organs, in which the seeds are packed, to be in other funguses the source of their fecundation. But these at present are mere conjectures.
[106] Several byssoid growths are in this predicament.
“Who seek for life in creatures they dissect,
Will lose it in the moment they detect.”—Pope.
[108] The colours of the spores are of considerable practical use in distinguishing the members of the large family of Agarics, some of which are determined by them.
[109] It appears too mechanical an explanation of a phenomenon so purely vital as growth, to make it in any way dependent on a system of wedges, however ingeniously applied.