Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1890 — A Strange Fungus. [ARTICLE]

A Strange Fungus.

William Hamilton Gibson, in Harper’s Young Peup'e. Once, while Bitting in the woods by the edge of a stream, a young companion called my attention to an orange-colored cone about threequarters of an ineh in height protruding from a bed of green moss at my elbow. I discovered it to be the cap of a small mushroom, whoso stem penetrated deep into the moss. With much care I suceeded in separating •the moss, being curious to discover upon what the fungus had grown, and to my astonishment, when I draw it to the surface, found it attached to a chrysalis an inch and a half in length. The braenhing roots of the fungus penetrated the interior, and a dissection of the chrysalis showed the periectly formed ready to emerge, but now being transformed from an insect into a fungus by the absorption of the plant. What do wo infer from this? I have never seen this species described except in ray own paper in the Scientific American some years since, but it Irnafa to assume that' if*~W~TS T ~evoi> : seen again, in the moss or elsewhere, the same chrysalis will be drawn to the surface wit-hit. for it plainly belongs to a genius |>f Jfungi oof Jwhich are “among the most remarkable of their tribe. In New Z eland, for inst nee,’here is r.|shnii t species which has a fancy for tlio head of a certain caterpillar. It grows rapidly to the length of several inches, gradually absorbing the body of the insect, and at length takes root in the ground and continues its growth. ——- In the Chinese apothecaries’ shops we may obtain ajjqueer bundle, like a small bunch of dried fagots, about four inches in length. They are powdered and used as medicine by the innocent Celestials, and are a regular article in their pharmacopoeia. It needs but a second glance to see that these dried sticks consist of a longstemmed fungus attached to the head of. a wrinkled dead caterpillar, a species known as the Sphaeria Chinesis in the techical works. There are only one or two of the typical eccentricities of this wonderful tribe fungous growths. Almost any half-hour’s walk in the country will show us many equally as curious.