—there were many like her—such as the world
will do well never to breed again. All the
women knitted. They knitted worthless things;
but, the mechanical work was a mechanical
substitute for eating and drinking; the hands
moved for the jaws and the digestive apparatus;
if the bony fingers had been still, the stomachs
would have been more famine-pinched.

But, as the fingers went, the eyes went, and
the thoughts. And as Madame Defarge moved
on from group to group, all three went quicker and
fiercer among every little knot of women that
she had spoken with, and left behind.

Her husband smoked at his door, looking after
her with admiration. "A great woman," said
he, "a strong woman, a grand woman, a frightfully
grand woman!"

Darkness closed around, and then came
the ringing of church bells and the distant beating
of the drums of the Royal Guard, as the
women sat knitting, knitting. Darkness
encompassed them. Another darkness was closing
in as surely, when the church bells, then ringing
pleasantly in many an airy steeple over France,
should be melted into thundering cannon; when
the drums should be beating to drown a
wretched voice, that night all potent as the voice
of Power and Plenty, Freedom and Life. So
much was closing in about the women who sat
knitting, knitting, that they their very selves
were closing in around a structure yet unbuilt,
where they were to sit knitting, knitting, counting
dropping heads.

GOOD AND BAD FUNGUS.

SOME of the most important diseases of corn
and other agricultural crops are owing to the
attacks of microscopic fungi. These have been
divided into four sorts: those attacking the
flower, as smut (uredo segetum); those attacking
the grain, as pepper-brand (uredo fœtida);
those attacking the leaves and chaff, as rust
(uredo rubigo); and those attacking the straw,
as corn-mildew (puccinia graminis). Smutballs,
pepper-brand, or blight, is a powdery
matter occupying the inside of the grain of
wheat, and when examined under the microscope
is found to consist of minute balls, four
millions of which may exist in a single grain,
and each of these contains numerous little
spores. In this disease the seeds retain their
form and appearance, but the parasitic fungus
has a peculiarly fœtid odour, and hence is called
stinking rust. Dust-brand is a sooty powder,
having no smell, found in oats and barley, and
shows itself conspicuously before the ripening of
the crop. Bauer says that in one one hundred
and sixty thousandth part of a square inch he
counted forty-nine spores of this fungus. Rust
is an orange powder exuding from the inner chaff
scales, and forming yellow or brown spots and
blotches in various parts of corn plants. It is
sometimes called red gum, red robin, red rust,
and red rag. Mildew is supposed to be another
state of the same disease.

Those fungi which are developed in the interior
of plants, and appear afterwards on the surface,
are called entophytic, within a plant.
Their minute sporules are either directly applied
to the plants, entering by their stomata, or they
are taken up from the soil. Many other funguses
grow parasitically on plants, and either
give rise to disease or modify it in a peculiar
way. In the potato disease a species of fungus
commits great ravages by spreading its spawn
through the cells of the leaves and the tubers,
and thus accelerating their destruction. Various
kinds of fungi attack the tomata, beet,
turnip, and carrot. A species of derpazia sometimes
causes disease in the knots of wheat. A
diseased state of rye and other grasses, called
ergot, is owing to a fungus which causes the
ovary of the grain to become dark coloured, and
project from the chaff in the form of a spur;
and hence its name of spurred rye. The nutritious
part of the grain is destroyed, and it acquires
highly injurious properties.

Many kinds of wood are liable to the attacks
of fungi, " which renders," says the Rev. M. J.
Berkeley, " one or two species, known under the
common name of dry-rot, such a dreadful plague
in ships and buildings." This disease, once
established, spreads with wonderful rapidity;
and Professor Burnett records the following instance
of the speed with which a building may
be destroyed by this insidious enemy. " I
knew," he says, "a house into which the rot
gained admittance, and which, during the four
years we rented it, had the parlours twice wainscoted,
and a new flight of stairs, the dry-rot
having rendered it unsafe to go from the ground-
floor to the bedrooms. Every precaution was
taken to remove the decaying timbers when
the new work was done; yet the dry-rot so
rapidly gained strength, that the house was
ultimately pulled down. Some of my books
which suffered least, and which I still retain,
bear mournful impressions of its ruthless hand;
others were so much affected that the leaves re-
sembled tinder, and, when the volumes were
opened, fell out in dust or fragments."

A species of fungus called racodhun is some-
what bacchanalian in its tastes, and to gratify
them pays frequent visits to cellars and places
like the London Docks, where it is said "he
pays his unwelcome visits, and is in even worse
odour than the exciseman." An instance is related
of a gentleman who, having a cask of wine
rather too sweet for immediate use, directed that
it should be placed in a cellar, that the saccharine
it contained might be decomposed by age; at
the end of three years he directed his butler to
ascertain the state of the wine, when, on at-
tempting to open the cellar door, it was found to
be impossible, on account of some powerful
obstacle. The door being cut down, the cellar
was found to be completely filled with a fungous
production, so firm that it was necessary to use
an axe for its removal. This appeared to have
grown from, or to have been nourished by, the
decomposing particles of the wine, the cask
being empty, and carried up to the ceiling,
where it was supported by the fungus.