Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 21.djvu/254

244 that immeasurably transcends all others, should alone undergo absolute extinction. It needs must be, therefore, that mind or mental force shall continue to exist after dissolution of the organism with which its manifestations are associated, by passing into a new state, or new conditions of activity, of which science takes no cognizance. Thus considered, mind, in its ultimate analysis, becomes a purely spiritual entity which can never be dissolved and commingled with the heterogeneous forces of the material world.



HE molds represent an immense variety of minute plants that grow upon a great number of objects, and under different circumstances. The spores from which they are developed are borne in the air, imperceptibly to us because of their extreme littleness. The microscopic examination of them reveals some very curious dispositions and forms, always worthy of admiration. We often, in the spring, perceive blades of grass covered with a chalk-like dust, so white that one is at first sight inclined to take it to be hoar-frost. On examining it with a microscope of small power, we shall perceive a real forest of



minute plants. Little bundles of very delicate filaments, clear and crystalline, composed of roundish cells connected together, rise from a network of other branching filaments, which are collectively called the mycelium (Fig. 1). These curious organisms are the first phases of a parasitic plant belonging to the great order of the cryptogams, or a 