The family of Funguses, in the comprehensive sense in which we now employ the term, is immense. Merely catalogued and described, there are sufficient to fill an octavo volume of nearly 400 pages of close print, of British species alone; altogether, there cannot be less than 5000 recognized species at present known, and each year adds new ones to the list. The reader’s surprise at this will somewhat diminish, when he considers, that not only the toadstools which beset his walks, whether growing upon the ground or at the roots of trees, belong to this class, but that the immense hordes of parasites which feed at his expense, and foul, like the Harpies, whatever they may not actually consume, belong to it also. For the single mushroom that we eat, how many hundreds there be that retaliate and prey upon us in return! To enumerate but a few, and these of the microscopic kinds (on the other side are some which the arms can scarcely embrace): the _Mucor mucedo_, that spawns upon our dried preserves; the _Ascophora mucedo_, that makes our bread mouldy (“mucidæ frustra farinæ”[16]); the _Uredo segetum_, that burns Ceres out of her own cornfields; the _Uredo rubigo_, whose rust is still more destructive; and the _Puccinia graminis_, whose voracity sets corn-laws and farmers at defiance, are all funguses! So is the grey _Monilia_, that rots, and then fattens upon, our fruits; and the _Mucor herbariorum_, that destroys the careful gleanings of the painstaking botanist. When our beer becomes mothery, the mother of that mischief is a fungus. If pickles acquire a bad taste, if ketchup turns ropy and putrifies, funguses have a finger in it all! Their reign stops not here; they prey upon each other; they even select their victims! There is the _Myrothecium viride_, which will only grow upon dry Agarics, preferring chiefly, for this purpose, the _Agaricus adustus_; the _Mucor[17] chrysospermus_, which attacks the flesh of a particular _Boletus_; the _Sclerotium cornutum_, which visits some other moist mushrooms in decay. There are some _Xylomas_ that will spot the leaves of the Maple, and some those of the Willow, exclusively. The naked seeds of some are found burrowing between the opposite surface of leaves; some love the neighbourhood of burnt stubble and charred wood; some visit the sculptor in his studio, growing up amidst the heaps of moistened marble dust that have caked and consolidated under his saw. The _Racodium_ of the low cellar[18] festoons its ceiling, shags its walls, and wraps its thick coat round our wine-casks,[19] keeping our oldest wine in closest bond; while the _Geastrum_, aspiring occasionally to leave this earth, has been found suspended, like Mahomet’s coffin, between it and the stars, on the very highest pinnacle of St. Paul’s.[20] The close cavities of nuts occasionally afford concealment to some species; others, like leeches, stick to the bulbs of plants, and suck