* * *

Observ. XX. _Of _blue Mould_, and of the first Principles of Vegetation
arising from _Putrefaction_._

The Blue and White and several kinds of hairy mouldy spots, which are
observable upon divers kinds of _putrify'd_ bodies, whether Animal
substances, or Vegetable, such as the skin, raw or dress'd, flesh, bloud,
humours, milk, green Cheese, &c. or rotten sappy Wood, or Herbs, Leaves,
Barks, Roots, &c. of Plants, are all of them nothing else but several kinds
of small and variously figur'd Mushroms, which, from convenient materials
in those _putrifying_ bodies, are, by the concurrent heat of the Air,
excited to a certain kind of vegetation, which will not be unworthy our
more serious speculation and examination, as I shall by and by shew. But,
first, I must premise a short description of this _Specimen_, which I have
added of this Tribe, in the first Figure of the XII. _Scheme_, which is
nothing else but the appearance of a small white spot of hairy mould,
multitudes of which I found to bespeck & whiten over the red covers of a
small book, which, it seems, were of Sheeps skin, that being more apt to
gather mould, even in a dry and clean room, then other leathers. These
spots appear'd, through a good _Microscope_, to be a very pretty shap'd
Vegetative body, which, from almost the same part of the Leather, shot out
multitudes of small long cylindrical and transparent stalks, not exactly
streight, but a little bended with the weight of a round and white knob
that grew on the top of each of them; many of these knobs I observ'd to be
very round, and of a smooth surface, such as A, A, &c. others smooth
likewise, but a little oblong, as B; several of them a little broken, or
cloven with chops at the top, as C; others flitter'd as 'twere, or flown
all to pieces, as D, D. The whole substance of these pretty bodies was of a
very tender constitution, much like the substance of the softer kind of
common white Mushroms, for by touching them with a Pin, I found them to be
brused and torn; they seem'd each of them to have a distinct root of their
own; for though they grew neer together in a cluster, yet I could perceive
each stem to rise out of a distinct part or pore of the Leather; some of
these were small and short, as seeming to have been but newly sprung up, of
these the balls were for the most part round, others were bigger, and
taller, as being perhaps of a longer growth, and of these, for the most
part,