Dr. M.C. Cooke, in speaking of non-parasitic fungi, and especially of moulds, says: "It would be far more difficult to mention substances on which they are never developed than to indicate where they have been found." The parasitic fungi, however, generally confine themselves to certain special plants, and rarely to any other. It is only the condition of these special plants, when affected by decay, that seems favorable for their development; not because their spores (assuming that all fungi come from spores,) possess the intelligence to fly about and hunt up the proper nutrient matter on which to subsist during their developmental progress from specific spores into genetic forms of life. The rust or blight of grain is not the cause, therefore, but rather the result, of the common disease known as "blight." Without some excess or deficiency of absorption and elaboration in the growth of grain or plants--something essentially disturbing their normal and harmonious processes of development--no mycological forms would appear on their stems or roots, nor would they develop themselves on their fading leaves or congested and decaying fruit. To say that there is any intelligent preference in these fungi--the different species of _Mucor_, for instance--for disgusting offal over decaying fruit, bread, paste, preserves, etc., is to predicate a higher degree of intelligence of fungus spores than of the average brute creation, with all its wonderful instincts for guidance. We might refer to other classes of fungi developing themselves in the testa of hard seeds, and in the interior of acorns, sweet chestnuts, etc.,--those in which there is no discoverable external opening by the aid of the microscope--to show the absolute absurdity of the theory that the spores of fungi, including the non-parasitic and other autonomous moulds, go madly foraging about the country in pursuit of decaying cocoanuts, apples, pears, plums, oranges, etc., and even committing their depredations on hermetically canned fruits, the concealed honeycomb of beehives, the pupa of moths, and whatever else they may intelligently select as a desirable matrix or habitat. No such theory as this will stand the test of thorough research and investigation, in any mycological direction. Fungi everywhere make their initial appearance in the conditions of decay, as plants and trees originally make theirs in the environing conditions of vital manifestation. That our life-giving atmosphere--the "_pater omnipotens Æther_" of Virgil, "descending into the bosom of his joyous spouse (the earth) in fructifying showers, and great himself, mingling with her great body" for the development of all things of life--should be so immeasurably thronged with death-pursuing fungi that myriads of their spores might dance without jostling on the point of a cambric needle, is infinitely more fanciful than the conceptions of the poet, in personifying the atmosphere as "father Æther," and the earth as