(Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 508). In Mesopotamia cemeteries have been discovered where the sepulchral jars were set upside down, clearly by way of hindering the ghosts from escaping into the upper world. In the Dublin museum we see specimens of ancient Celtic tombs showing the same peculiarity. For a like reason perhaps the name of the dead must among the Aruntas not be uttered, nor the grave approached, by certain classes of kinsmen. The same repugnance to naming the dead exists all over the world, and leads survivors who share the dead man’s name to adopt another, at least for a time. If the dead man’s name was that of a plant, tree, animal or stream, that too is changed. Here is a potent cause of linguistic change, that also renders any historical tradition impossible. The survivors seem to fear that the ghost will come when he hears his name called; but it also hangs together with the taboo which hedges round the dead as it does kings, chieftains and priests.
Authorities.—B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1899); F. B. Jevons, Introduction to History of Religion (London, 1896); E. S. Hartland, The Legend of Perseus, vol. ii.; J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (London, 1900); L. W. Faraday, “Custom and Belief in the Icelandic Sagas,” in Folk-lore, vol. xvii. No. 4; E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (London, 1903); E. A. W. Budge, The Mummy (Cambridge, 1893); C. Royer, “Les Rites funéraires aux époques préhistoriques,” Revue d’anthropologie (1876); Forrer, Über die Totenbestattung bei den Pfahlbauern (Ausland, 1885); J. Lubbock, Origin of Civilization (London, 1875) and Prehistoric Times (London, 1865); L. A. Muratori, “De antiquis Christianorum sepulchris,” Anecd. Graeca (Padua, 1709); Onaphr. Panvinius, De ritu sepeliendi mortuos apua veteres Christianos, reprinted in Volbeding’s Thesaurus (Leipzig, 1841). (F. C. C.)
FUNGI (pl. of Lat. fungus, a mushroom), the botanical name
covering in the broad sense all the lower cellular Cryptogams
devoid of chlorophyll, which arise from spores, and the thallus
of which is either unicellular or composed of branched or unbranched
tubes or cell-filaments (hyphae) with apical growth,
or of more or less complex wefted sheets or tissue-like masses
of such (mycelium). The latter may in certain cases attain large
dimensions, and even undergo cell-divisions in their interior,
resulting in the development of true tissues. The spores, which
may be uni- or multicellular, are either abstricted free from
the ends of hyphae (acrogenous), or formed from segments in
their course (chlamydospores) or from protoplasm in their interior
(endogenous). The want of chlorophyll restricts their mode of
life—which is rarely aquatic—since they are therefore unable
to decompose the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere, and renders
them dependent on other plants or (rarely) animals for their
carbonaceous food-materials. These they obtain usually in the
form of carbohydrates from the dead remains of other organisms,
or in this or other forms from the living cells of their hosts;
in the former case they are termed saprophytes, in the latter
parasites. While some moulds (Penicillium, Aspergillus) can
utilize almost any organic food-materials, other fungi are more
restricted in their choice—e.g. insect-parasites, horn- and
feather-destroying fungi and parasites generally. It was
formerly the custom to include with the Fungi the Schizomycetes
or Bacteria, and the Myxomycetes or Mycetozoa; but the
peculiar mode of growth and division, the cilia, spores and other
peculiarities of the former, and the emission of naked amoeboid
masses of protoplasm, which creep and fuse to streaming plasmodia,
with special modes of nutrition and spore-formation of
the latter, have led to their separation as groups of organisms
independent of the true Fungi. On the other hand, lichens,
previously regarded as autonomous plants, are now known to
be dual organisms—fungi symbiotic with algae.
The number of species in 1889 was estimated by Saccardo at about 32,000, but of these 8500 were so-called Fungi imperfecti—i.e. forms of which we only know certain stages, such as conidia, pycnidia, &c., and which there are reasons for regarding as merely the corresponding stages of higher forms. Saccardo also included about 400 species of Myxomycetes and 650 of Schizomycetes. Allowing for these and for the cases, undoubtedly not few, where one and the same fungus has been described under different names, we obtain Schroeter’s estimate (in 1892) of 20,000 species. In illustration of the very different estimates that have been made, however, may be mentioned that of De Bary in 1872 of 150,000 species, and that of Cooke in 1895 of 40,000, and Massee in 1899 of over 50,000 species, the fact being that no sufficient data are as yet to hand for any accurate census. As regards their geographical distribution, fungi, like flowering plants, have no doubt their centres of origin and of dispersal; but we must not forget that every exchange of wood, wheat, fruits, plants, animals, or other commodities involves transmission of fungi from one country to another; while the migrations of birds and other animals, currents of air and water, and so forth, are particularly efficacious in transmitting these minute organisms. Against this, of course, it may be argued that parasitic forms can only go where their hosts grow, as is proved to be the case by records concerning the introduction of Puccinia malvacearum, Peronospora viticola, Hemileia vastatrix, &c. Some fungi—e.g. moulds and yeasts—appear to be distributed all over the earth. That the north temperate regions appear richest in fungi may be due only to the fact that North America and Europe have been much more thoroughly investigated than other countries; it is certain that the tropics are the home of very numerous species. Again, the accuracy of the statement that the fleshy Agaricini, Polyporei, Pezizae, &c., are relatively rarer in the tropics may depend on the fact that they are more difficult to collect and remit for identification than the abundantly recorded woody and coriaceous forms of these regions. When we remember that many parts of the world are practically unexplored as regards fungi, and that new species are constantly being discovered in the United States, Australia and northern Europe—the best explored of all—it is clear that no very accurate census of fungi can as yet be made, and no generalizations of value as to their geographical distribution are possible.
The existence of fossil fungi is undoubted, though very few of the identifications can be relied on as regards species or genera. They extend back beyond the Carboniferous, where they occur as hyphae, &c., preserved in the fossil woods, but the best specimens are probably those in amber and in siliceous petrifactions of more recent origin.
|
| Fig. 1.—1, Peronospora parasitica (De Bary). Mycelium with haustoria (h); 2, Erysiphe; A and B, mycelium (m), with haustoria (h). (After De Bary.) |
Organs.—Individual hyphae or their branches often exhibit specializations of form. In many Basidiomycetes minute branches arise below the septa; their tips curve over the outside of the latter, and fuse with the cell above just beyond it, forming a clamp-connexion. Many parasitic hyphae put out minute lateral branches, which pierce the cell-wall of the host and form a peg-like (Trichosphaeria), sessile (Cystopus), or stalked (Hemileia), knot-like, or a more or less branched (Peronospora) or coiled (Protomyces) haustorium. In Rhizopus certain hyphae creep horizontally on the surface of the substratum, and then anchor their tips to it by means of a tuft of short branches (appressorium), the walls of which soften and gum
