tenui pur esse ove più ove meno injettate, e del color dello scarlatto, le crasse morbosamente ristrette, ma meno delle tenui ingorgate; sì le une che le altre vuote d’alimenti, e non contenenti che poca quantità di muco bigio-nerastro e qualche lombrico. Le meningi erano anch’ esse sommamente injettate, specialmente la pia; la sostanza del cervello meno consistente del naturale, punteggiata di rosso, e la base dello stesso nuotante in una quantità considerabile di siero sanguinolento.”—_Vitt._ p. 340. [96] When dried, gr. xx.-xxv. will scarcely produce the effects of gr. v. of the fungus when first gathered.—_Vitt._ [97] The total quantity of moisture absorbed by funguses, during development and growth, is great; thus, if a number of small Agarics, still in their wrappers, be placed in wineglasses half filled with water, this will be rapidly absorbed, even before they break through their membrane. Moreover, if Agarics or Boletuses, already developed, be placed in glasses containing so many ounces of water, the amount of which has been previously ascertained, and equal to that in another glass, by which to make allowance for what has been lost by evaporation, the result will generally be that a quantity of water, equal to from one-fourth to one-third of the full weight of each fungus, will have been absorbed and exhaled again in two days. The redundant moisture of those plants is rendered conspicuous if we place a Boletus on a watch-glass, the surface of which is speedily beaded with drops of water, as if it had been in the rain; while the quantity of fluid is sometimes so great as to defeat the object we had in placing it there, viz. that of collecting the spores. [98] The reader desirous of a detailed account of this interesting fungus, should consult a small quarto _brochure_ published some years ago, by Professor Gasparini, of Naples, who was preparing a second edition in the autumn of 1844, with numerous additions, which has, no doubt, been reprinted. [99] Or rather, as Professor Tenore has told me, from the _Populus nigra_, var. _Neapolitana_. [100] Müller declares that fermentation is itself a fungus, which continues to feed and multiply so long as it finds the elements of nutrition in the liquid in which it originates. This, then, is employing one fungus life to evoke another. [101] All blocks of this nut-wood do not bear. Professor Sanguinetti informs me that the peasants in the Abruzzi, who bring in these logs, know perfectly which will succeed and which will not; “a knowledge,” he adds, “to which closest attention during all the years that I have been employed by the Papal Government as superintendent of the fungus market, has not yet enabled me to attain.”