to, and independent of, any pathological relation of the plant from which they grow. If then fungus life be not to be sought for, and cannot with propriety be said to originate in any morbid conditions of the tissues from which they spring, whence do they derive life—in other words, whence in every instance comes that particular seed which, when quickened, is to produce after its kind? Lies this dormant for a season in those dead and decaying tissues, which a little later the plant originating from it is destined to embellish; or is the living germ first brought to them by the winds, and merely deposited on their surface, as in a fitting _nidus_ on which their future development is to be effected? Some writers take one view, some another. Many believe the seeds of funguses to come directly from the earth,[103] and to be drawn up with the sap, which, as it penetrates throughout the tissues of the plant, must carry the seeds also along with it. That such is actually sometimes the case is certain, since we can not only plant parasitical blights of a particular kind so as to infect particular plants, but may also by digging a trench between those that have already become diseased, and those that are still healthy, stay the progress of the blight—thus clearly establishing not only the fact of seeds, but also the highly interesting additional one, of their ascent into the structures of plants by intus-susception; and to arrive at a general view from these particular cases, this would seem to be the usual mode of their propagation. Neither does it make against this view nor is it more in favour of the other, which supposes the germs to be derived primarily from the air, and to be thence precipitated on the structures where they grow, that funguses are found on organizations in decay, on withered boughs, and on seared leaves, out of which all sap must of course have been long ago exsiccated; for what then? though the sap does, the seeds do not, evaporate with it. These, once absorbed and diffused during the lifetime of the plant throughout its whole economy, remain there in a state of potential activity, ready to burst forth and germinate whenever the necessary conditions for these wonderful changes shall be presented to them, just as though the seeds of corn now flourishing in different parts of England, had first existed for some thousand years as mummy wheat, potentially and unquickened. Nothing perishes in nature: “destructio unius matrix alterius;” life may change titles, but never becomes extinct; so soon as the more perfect plant dies, a host of other vegetable existences, hitherto enthralled by laws of an organization superior to their own, now that the connection has been dissevered, put forth their separate energies, and severally assert their independence. The poplar may have perished, root, stem, and branch, but its extinction is only the signal for other existences, which had