Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/125

106 Agrotis,) and is considered to possess strengthening and renovating properties, but owing to its rarity is only employed in the Emperor's palace after this fashion:—a duck is stuffed with five drachms of the Fungus and roasted slowly, and after the flesh is thoroughly impregnated, it is to be eaten daily for eight or ten days.

The doubt arises in our mind, whether the larva is attacked when living and eventually killed by the germination of the plant, or does its dead body afford that peculiar stage of decomposition favorable to the growth of the Fungus? In support of the former opinion, we know of one species of Fungus, the Botrytis Bassiana causing the disease called muscardine, and resulting, as C. R. Bree, Esq., in a paper on the "Diseases of Silkworms," (Naturalist, 1858, p. 215,) explains, from an excess of acidity attacking the worm before its entrance into the chrysalis state, and in the West Indies it is not at all uncommon to see a description of Podistes flying about with plants of a fungoid nature streaming from its body, the germs as Carpenter ("The Microscope," page 379,) suggests, having been probably introduced through the breathing pores at their sides and taken root in their substance, so as to produce a luxuriant vegetation. A specimen of this wasp with a Sphæria attached, from Jamaica, was exhibited at the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, in August, 1858. Nor is the human frame exempt from such growths, for Sarcina ventriculi is the cause of some painful forms of dyspepsia, and Dr. Carpenter speaks of the probability of its inhabiting the stomach in large quantities, and for a