A plain easy account of British fungi : with descriptions of the esculent and poisonous species.

  • Cooke, M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt), 1825-1914.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A plain easy account of British fungi : with descriptions of the esculent and poisonous species. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    ijf them where it is not. Wherever decaying vege- able matter exists, we may expect to find a new ace flourishing amid the debris, as in the decay if the garden of “ the sensitive plant ” described >y Shelley :— And plants at whose name the verse feels loath, Fill’d the place with a monstrous undergrowth, Prickly and pulpous, and blistering, and blue, Livid, and starr’d with a lurid dew. And agarics, and fungi, with mildew and mould, Started like mist from the wet ground cold; Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead With a spirit of growth had been animated. Their mass rotted off them flake by flake. Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer’s stake. Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high, Infecting the winds that wander by. Such a spot is an almost certain home for fungi. 11 very rotten stump or twig, every decaying leaf or fruit, as its peculiar species,—some large enough to attract mmediate attention, others so small as to be invisible o the unaided eye. But we need not travel from home o meet with examples: the unwelcome dry-rot may ave committed its ravages beneath our kitchen floor; hr the walls of our cellars, and our casks, or bottles of [ fine, may be infested with members of this ubiquitous ace. Can we find no morsel of bread or cheese upon which a mould is flourishing? no towel or other article {f household linen presenting traces of mildew ? Are ve perfectly certain that all our preserves are unvisited b 2