REMARKABLE FUNGI IN NEVADA MINES.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 191, 12 August 1881, Page 4

REMARKABLE FUNGI IN NEVADA MINES.

A gentleman who recently had occasion to explore the chambers, drifts and caverns of tbe old deserted Mexican and Ophir mines says that fungi of every imaginable kind have taken possession of the old levels. In these old mines, undisturbed for years, is found a fungus world in which are fco be seen counterfeits of almost everything seen in our daylight world. Owing to the warmth of the old level, and to the presence in them of a certain amount of moisture, the timbers have been made to grow some] curious cropp. Some of tho fungi in the old chambers are several feet in height, ai d being snow white resemble sheeted ghosts. In places are what at a little distance appear to be white owls, and there are representations of goats with long beard*, ali as white aa though carved in the purest marble. Tbe rank fungus growth bas almost Eome of the drifts. The fungi are of almost every imaginable variety. Some kinds hang down from the timber like great bunches of snow white hair, and others are great pulp masses. These last generally rise from the rocks forming the floor of the drifts, and seem to have grown from something dropped or spilled on tbe ground at tbe time work was in progress years ago. These growths have in several places raised from the ground rocks weighing from 10 to 50 and even 100 pounds. Some of the rocks have thus been lifted more j tban tbree feet. In the higher levels, where the air is comparatively dry, the fungi are less massive in structure than below and are much firmer in texture. Some resemble rams' horns, as they grow in a spiral or twisted shape, *bile oibers, four or five feet in length and about the thickness of a broom handle, bang from the cap timbers like so many snakes suspended by the tails. One kind, after sending out a stem of the thickness of a pencil to the length of a foot or two, appears to blossom — at least produces at the end a bulbouß mass that has Bome resemblance to a flower. In all the infinite variety of these underground fungi ifc ia somewhat strange that not one was seen at all like tho.e growing upon the surface in tbe light of day. Nothing in the nature of toadstools or mushrooms was found.