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The Meteoric Stone (Excluded when the nidus)

are excluded, when the nidus, in which they are deposited, or the temperature, is favourable for their development. No fortuitous concourse, either of atoms or fluids, could produce bodies so exquisitely and so regularly organized. It is suf ficient, to throw one's eye on the beautiful plates which Schæffer has published of them, and compare them, by the glass, with the warts and other excrescences of animals, to be convinced that they have not the same origin. The function of the cellular substance in vegetables must be greatly superior to that in animals, if it could produce any thing but deformities. The greater part of fungi exhibit a configuration much too regular, constant, and uniform, to be the effect of chance or putrefaction. As this form is preserved the same in all places where fungi have been found, it follows, that they contain in themselves the principles of reproduction. They resemble the misletoe, and other parasitic plants, which are perfectly distinct from the trees on which they grow. The fungi, therefore, are organized and living substances, or true plants.