FUNGI.

Cellular plants, with irregular and fibrous cells, lacking a perfect epidermis and stomata, agamae reproducing without sexual organs. The vegetative system, called mycelium fungal network, is floccose, for the most part hidden in the matrix, similar, thalliform, but responding only to the rootlets of more perfect plants without anything analogous to a stem and leaves, without gemmules (gonidia), and without any character or herbaceous colors. By a simple metamorphosis, the mycelium gives rise to a preeminent fructification system, originally veiled, which will perish definitively once all its organs are simultaneously developed, producing sporidia. The sporidia differ greatly in their degree of evolution; they are vesicular, extending upon germination into a thread homogeneous with the mycelium. Cryptogamae homonemeae cryptogams with uniform tissue, nourishing themselves by inward absorption from the matrix, consisting of a prevailing fungous matter, exhaling nitrogen.

The most vast class of all plants, like the Insects of the Animals, highly diverse in habit and degree of evolution, to which are attached at the bottom certain formations that are rather exanthematic, but enlivened by autonomous life. We distinguish six primary families:

First series, with a discrete, contiguous, subascigerous thalamium.
I. HYMENOMYCETES. Thalamium discrete, centrifugal or external. Sporidia exerted at the tips of the asci, separating.
II. DISCOMYCETES. Sporidia received by a discrete, superior, discoid thalamium, arranged in series within asci, then to be ejected elastically.
III. PYRENOMYCETES. Sporidia received by a discrete, centripetal thalamium, deliquescing.

Second series, with no or loose thalamium, not discrete.
IV. GASTEROMYCETES. Sporidia within a composed peridium or the substance of the fungus.
V. HYPHOMYCETES. Sporidia born from discrete flocci and their metamorphosis.
VI. CONIOMYCETES. Sporidia born from conidia, whether autonomous or from the metamorphosis of more perfect plants. No discrete sporidiiferous flocci.