“So surprising a result lets in a flood of light on many known cases of fungi, which are, as a rule, _non_-parasitic, becoming so, in fact, only when the host plant is in an abnormal condition, _e.g._, the entry of species of Botrytis into living tissues when the weather is cold and damp and the light dull; the entry of Mucor into various fruits, tomatoes, apples, pears, &c., when the hyphæ meet with a slight crack or wound, through which the juices are exposed. It is exceedingly probable that the rapid infection of potato leaves in damp weather in July is traceable not merely to the favouring effect of the moisture on the fungus, but that the state of super-saturation of the cell-walls of the potato leaf--the tissues of which are now unduly filled with water and dissolved sugars, &c., owing to the dull light and diminished transpiration--is the primary factor which determines the easy victory of the parasite, and, as Professor Ward suggested some time ago, that the suppressed life of Ustilagineæ in the stems of grasses is due to the want of particular carbo-hydrates in the vegetative tissues, but which are present in the grain. A year later Miyoshi carried proof to demonstration, and showed that a fungus-hypha is actually so attracted by substances on the other side of a membrane, and that its tip pierces the latter; for the hyphæ were made to grow through films of artificial cellulose, of collodion, of cellulose impregnated with paraffin, of parchment paper, and even the chitinous coat of an insect, simply by placing the intact films on gelatine impregnated with the attracting substance, and laying the spores on the opposite side of the membrane. “Now this is obviously a point of the highest importance in the theory of parasitism and parasitic diseases, because it suggests at once that in the varying conditions of the cells, the contents of which are separated only by membranous walls from the fungus-hyphæ, whose entrance means ruin and destruction, there may be found circumstances which sometimes favour and sometimes disfavour the entrance of the hyphæ; and it is, at least, a remarkable fact that some of the substances which experiments prove to be highly attractive to such hyphæ--_e.g._, sugars, the sap of plums, phosphates, nitrates, &c.--are just the substances found in plants; and the discovery that the action depends upon the nature of the substance as well as on the kind of fungus, and is affected by its concentration, the temperature, and other circumstances, only confirms us in this idea.”