Attractive Characters in Fungi

Abstract

IN the communications which have recently appeared in your journal on this subject, it has been taken for granted that, in the development of spores into mycelium, the former must necessarily pass through the body of an animal host. We have no scientific evidence of this. I am inclined to think that the theory is a remnant of the old superstition that toadstools are the result of the excrement of toads, and that we must seek for more natural processes of fertilization if we are to solve the mystery. Unbelief is sometimes the nearest road to a right faith. Scepticism is often the gate to truth. It is at least desirable that those who are investigating the subject should approach it unfettered by a theory which is yet destitute of proof, and should direct their researches to ground which is not littered with what may be only the fragments of an exploded superstition. My own observations tend to convince me that germination of the spore and development of the mycelium are alike dependent upon conditions of soil, modified by atmospheric influences, fertilizing agents, &c., &c. It may be added that the solution of the problem is rendered more difficult by the apparently inexplicable fact in Nature, so strikingly exemplified in the field of mycology, “that of fifty seeds She often brings but one to bear.”