Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/530

 500, and destined to produce a brood of maggots, to feed on the decaying fungus, as on a dead carcase. Ellis's beautiful discoveries, relative to corals and their inhabiting polypes, led to the strange analogical hypothesis that these insects formed the fungus, which Munchausen and others have asserted. Some have thought fungi were composed of the sap of corrupted wood, transmuted into a new sort of being, an idea as unphilosophical as the former, and unsupported by any semblance of truth.

Dryander, Schæffer and Hedwig have, on much better grounds, asserted their vegetable nature, detected their seeds, and in many cases explained their parts of fructification. In fact, they propagate their species as regularly as any other organized beings, though, like others, subject to varieties. Their sequestered and obscure habitations, their short duration, their mutability of form and substance, render them indeed more difficult of investigation than common plants, but there is no reason to suppose them less perfect,