CHAPTER
XVII
THE FUNGUS FOREST- ENCHANTMENT
Along
the chamber through which we now passed I saw by the mellow light great pillars,
capped with umbrella-like covers, some of them reminding me of the common
toadstool of upper Earth, on a magnificent scale. Instead, however, of the grey
and somber shades to which I had been accustomed, these objects were of various
hues and combined the brillancy of the primary prismatic colors, with the purity
of clean snow. Now they would stand solitary, like sentinels; again they would
be arranged in rows, the alingment as true as if established by the hair of a
transit, forming columnar avenues, and in other situations they were wedged
together so as to produce masses, acres in extent, in which the stems became
hexagonal by compression.
The columnar stems, larger than my body, were often
spiral; again they were marked by diamond-shaped figures, or other geometrical
forms in relief, beautifully exact, drawn as by a masters hand in rich and
delicately blended colors, on pillars of pure alabaster. Not a few of the stems
showed deep crimson, blue or green, together with other rich colors combined;
over which, as delicate as the rarest of lace, would be thrown, in white, an
enamel-like intracate tracery, far surpassing in beauty of execution the most
exquisite needle-work I had ever seen. There could be no doubt I was in a forest
of collossal fungi, the species of which are more numerous than those of upper
earth, cryptomatic vegetation. The expanded heads of these great thallogens were
as varied as the stems I have described, and more so. Far above our path they
spread like beautiful umbrellas, decorated as if by masters from whom the great
painters of upper earth might learn the art of mixing colors.
Their under
surfaces were of many different designs, and were of as many shapes as it is
conceivable could be made of combinations of the circle of hyperbola. Stately
and picturesque, silent and immovable as the sphinx, they studded the great
cavern singly or in groups, reminding me of a grown childs wild imagination
of a fairy land. I stopped by a group which was of unusual conspicuity and gazed
in admiration on the huge and yet graceful, beautiful spectacle. I placed my
hand on the stem of one plant, and found it soft and impressable; but instead of
being moist, cold and clammy as the repulsive toadstool of upper earth, I
discovered, to my surprise, that it was pleasantly warm, and soft as velvet.
Smell your hand, said my guide.
I did so, and breathed in an aroma like that of fresh strawberries. My guide
observed ( I had learned to judge of his emotions by his facial expressions ) my
surprised countenance with indifference.
Try the next one, he said.
This being of a different species, when rubbed by my hand exhaled the odor of
the pineapple.
Extraordinary, I mused.
Not at all. Should productions of surface earth have a monopoly of
natures methods, all the flavors, all the perfumes? You may with equal
consistency express astonishment at the odors of the fruits of upper earth if
you do so at the fragrance of these vegetables, for they are also created of
odorless elements.
But toadstools are foul elements of low organization. They are neither animals
nor true vegetables, but occupy a station below that of plants proper, I
said.
You are acquainted with this order of vegetation under the most unfavorable
conditions; out of their native elements these plants degenerate and become then
abnormal , often evolving into the poisonous earth fungi known to your woods and
fields. Here they grow to perfection. This is their chosen habitat. They absorb
from a pure atmosphere the combined foods of plants and animals, and during
their existence meet no scorching sunrise. They flourish in a region of perfect
tranquility, and without a tremor, without experiencing the change of a fraction
of a degree of temperature, exist for ages. Many of these specimens are probably
thousands of years old, and are still growing; why should they ever die? They
have never been disturbed by a breath of moving air, and, balanced exactly on
their succulent, pedestal-like stems, surrounded by an atmosphere of dead
nitrogen, vapor, and other gases, with their roots imbedded in carbonates and
minerals, they have food at command, nutrition inexhaustible.
Still, I do not see why they grow to such mammoth proportions.
Plants adapt themselves to surrounding conditions, he remarked. The
oak tree in its proper latitude is tall and stately; trace it toward the Arctic
circle, and it becomes knotted, gnarled, rheumatic, and dwindles to a shrub. The
castor plant in the tropics is twenty or thirty feet in height, in the temperate
zone it is a herbaceous plant, farther North it has no existence. Indian corn in
Kentucky is luxurient, tall, and graceful, and each stalk is supplied with roots
to the second and third joint, while in the northland it scarcely reaches to the
shoulder of a man, and, in order to escape the early northern frost, arrives at
maturity before the more southern variety begins to tassel. The common jimson
weed ( datura stramonium ) planted in early spring, in rich soil, grows
luxuriently, covers a broad expanse and bears an abundance of fruit; planted in
midsummer it blossoms when but a few inches in height, and between two terminal
leaves hastens to produce a single capsule on the apex of the short stem, in
order to ripen its seed before the frost appears. These and other familiar
examples might be cited concerning the difference some species of vegetation of
your former land undergo under climatic conditions less marked than between
those that govern the growth of fungi here and on surface earth. Such specimens
of fungi as grow in your former home have escaped from these underground
regions, and are as much out of place as are the tropical plants transplanted to
the edge of eternal snow. Indeed, more so, for on the earth the ordinary fungus,
as a rule, germinates afte sunset, and often dies when the sun rises, while here
they may grow in peace eternally. These meandering caverns comprise thousands of
miles of surface covered by these growths which may yet fulfill a grand purpose
in the ceremony of nature, for they are destined to feed tramping multitudes
when the day appears in which the nations of men will desert the surface of the
earth and pass as a single people through these caverns on their way to the
immaculate existence to be found in the inner sphere.
I cannot disprove your statement, I again repeated; neither do I
accept it. However, it still seems to me unnatural to find such delicious
flavors and delicate odors connected with objects associated in memory with
things insipid, or so disagreeable as toadstools and rank forest fungi which I
abhorred on earth.
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