Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany

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H. Bailliere, 1857 - Cryptogams - 604 pages

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Page 129 - The phonolite stones of the Rhine, and the Tripoli stone, contain species identical with what are now contributing to form a sedimentary deposit (and perhaps, at some future period, a bed of rock) extending in one continuous stratum for 400 measured miles. I allude to the shores of the Victoria Barrier, along whose...
Page 89 - Late observations on the reproductive bodies of some algae show that their motion is produced by vibratile cilia, exactly in the same way as in certain animals. But it is exceedingly difficult to imagine the transformation of one real species into another. The same species may assume a vast variety of forms, according to varying circumstances, and it is highly instructive to observe these changes ; but, that the same spore should under different circumstances be capable of producing beings of an...
Page 241 - The same stump, if simply left to the action of the weather, might be half a century before it was fairly decayed. The appearance of such a fungus as Polyporus squamosus is the sure harbinger of speedy decay. Nor is the case much mended supposing vegetation still to exist in the stump ; for though the mycelium cannot prey on cells full of vital energy, life is so depressed by the presence and contact of tissues already diseased that the healthiest soon fall a prey to the spreading mycelium. There...
Page 300 - In a few cases, as m chccse, their growth is encouraged, and steps are even taken to inoculate untainted cheeses ; but in other instances they are a destructive poison, unless, indeed, the evil effects which have arisen from the use of certain mouldy provisions are to be ascribed to the decomposition of the matrix, rather than to the mould itself. Some of the species are developed with extreme rapidity, and a few years since, when the barrack bread was so much affected at Paris by a species of Penicillium,...
Page 610 - CHEMICAL TECHNOLOGY; OR, CHEMISTRY IN ITS APPLICATIONS TO THE ARTS AND MANUFACTURES. Vol. I., in 2 Parts, 8vo.
Page 251 - Berkley remarks (Outlines of British Fungology, 32) " that the spores of certain Fungi would bear a moist heat equal to that of boiling water without losing their power of germination. They have also considerable powers of resisting frost, but the exact limits in either case under varying circumstances have not at present been ascertained.

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