On mildew and fermentation / by A. de Bary.

  • Bary, A. de (Anton), 1831-1888.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On mildew and fermentation / by A. de Bary. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    rich and widely spread group of organism must in some way powerfully act on the economy of Nature, and on closer ob- servation we find, that its function is that of a police-inan. The parasitical Fungi attack chiefly single species of plants and animals, which are generally of that kind which is suitable for their nourishment. They transplant themselves by means of their shoots to new detached species, as long as these live scattered among kinds which are indifferent to the parasite. Those plants which are attacked by the parasite, become sickly and their decay is accelerated. The more a species multiplies, which nourishes a parasite, the more ex- clusively and densely it takes possession of a space, at the cost of others, the easier is the parasite and the disease which is caused by it, conveyed from one plant to the other, and the disease takes the character of an epidemic. The epide- mical illnesses of many plants, which are found exclusively in cultivated pieces of ground, and also of very many com- mon ones which grow wild, afford us well-known examples of this fact; innumerable caterpillars, flies etc. are killed every year through the parasitical Fungi. The police sendee of the parasites is directed against the increase of some sociable species at the cost of others. This zeal, however, has little weight against the energetic activity of the scavengers, which is directed towards the era- dicating of all the dead organic substance of vegetating sa- prophytes. If the decayed organic bodies are exposed to the atmo- spheric air of a certain temperature, and are in the neigh- bourhood of water, disunions occur, which render the com- bined complicated connection, which they possessed in life, much more simple. The result is putrefaction: the organic