stinkhorn (Phallus impudicus) has been observed to attain a height of four or five inches in as many hours. Rapidity of growth in fungi is necessarily followed by rapidity of decay. Though some of the larger and more corky species last throughout the summer, autumn, and winter, and a few are perennial, growing on the same trunk for many years, slowly and almost insensibly adding layer to layer, and attaining an enormous size, yet the vast generality of fungi are very fugacious. They are the ephemera of the vegetable kingdom. The entire life of most of the species ranges from four days to a fortnight or month; while there are numerous microscopic species of the mould family whose lives are so brief and evanescent as scarcely to allow sufficient time to make drawings of their forms. Fungi are extremely simple in their organization. They bring us back to first principles, and reveal to us the secret manner in which Nature builds up her most complicated vegetable structures. They are composed entirely of cellular tissue, of a definite aggregation of loose, more or less oval, elliptical cells with cavities between them. These cells in many species may be seen by the naked eye, and consist of little closed sacs of transparent colorless membrane. Here is the starting-point of life. Such cells are the primary germ or element from which every living thing, whether plant or animal, is produced. The whole process of vegetable growth is but a continuous multiplication of these cells. Although the structure of fungi is generally of a loosely cellular nature, yet they exhibit an astonishing variety of consistence. Each genus, and in many instances each species, displays a different texture. They range in substance from a watery pulp or a gelatinous scum to a fleshy, corky, leathery, or even ligneous mass. Some are mere thin fibres of airy cobweb spreading like a flocculent veil over decaying matter; while others resemble large, irregular masses of hard, tough wood. Their qualities are also exceedingly various. Like the ferns, they all possess a peculiar odor by which they may be easily recognized, although it is somewhat different in different individuals, some smelling strongly of cinnamon and bitter almonds, others of onions and tallow, while others yield an insupportable stench. As regards their tastes, the fungi are equally diversified, being insipid, acrid, styptic, caustic, or rich and sweet. Some have no taste in the mouth while masticated, but shortly after swallowing there is a dry, choking, burning sensation experienced at the back of the throat, which lasts for a considerable time. Upward of 3,000 distinct species have been found and described in Britain alone; while more than 20,000 species altogether are known to the scientific world. In round numbers it may be said that fungi form about a third of the flowerless plants.