Part 10 (2/2)
It pa.s.sed from existence behind and about me as if it were annihilated, without wasting away in the opalescent appearance once familiar as that of a spreading fog. Moreover, it seemed to detail such objects as were within the compa.s.s of a certain area close about me, but to lose in intensity beyond. The b.u.t.tons on my coat appeared as distinct as they ever did when I stood in the sunlight, and fully one-half larger than I formerly knew them to be. The corrugations on the palms of my hands stood out in bold serpentine relief that I observed clearly when I held my hands near my eye, my fingers appeared clumsy, and all parts of my person were magnified in proportion. The region at the limits of my range of perception reminded me of nothingness, but not of darkness. A circle of obliteration defined the border of the luminous belt which advanced as we proceeded, and closed in behind us. This line, or rather zone of demarkation, that separated the seen from the unseen, appeared to be about two hundred feet away, but it might have been more or less, as I had no method of measuring distances.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”I WAS IN A FOREST OF COLOSSAL FUNGI.”]
CHAPTER XVII.
THE FUNGUS FOREST.--ENCHANTMENT.
Along the chamber through which we now pa.s.sed 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 gray or somber shades to which I had been accustomed, these objects were of various hues and combined the brilliancy of the primary prismatic colors, with the purity of clean snow. Now they would stand solitary, like gigantic sentinels; again they would be arranged in rows, the alignment 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 ma.s.ses, 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 with diamond-shaped figures, or other regular geometrical forms in relief, beautifully exact, drawn as by a master's 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 intricate tracery, far surpa.s.sing in beauty of execution the most exquisite needle-work I had ever seen.
There could be no doubt that I was in a forest of colossal 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 humbly 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 and hyperbola. Stately and picturesque, silent and immovable as the sphinx, they studded the great cavern singly or in groups, reminding me of a grown child's wild imagination of fairy land. I stopped beside a group that 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 impressible; 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 nature's 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 structures of low organization.[3] They are neither animals nor true vegetables, but occupy a station below that of plants proper,” I said.
[3] The fungus Polyporus graveolens was neglected by the guide.
This fungus exhales a delicate odor, and is used in Kentucky to perfume a room. Being quite large, it is employed to hold a door open, thus being useful as well as fragrant.--J. U. L.
”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 tranquillity, and without a tremor, without experiencing the change of a fraction of a degree in 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 lat.i.tude 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 an herbaceous plant, farther north it has no existence. Indian corn in Kentucky is luxuriant, 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 ta.s.sel. The common jimson weed (datura stramonium) planted in early spring, in rich soil, grows luxuriantly, 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 lands 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 after 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 shall yet fulfill a grand purpose in the economy of nature, for they are destined to feed tramping mult.i.tudes when the day appears in which the nations of men will desert the surface of the earth and pa.s.s as a single people through these caverns on their way to the immaculate existence to be found in the inner sphere.”
”I can not 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 a.s.sociated in memory with things insipid, or so disagreeable as toadstools and the rank forest fungi which I abhorred on earth.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE FOOD OF MAN.
”This leads me to remark,” answered the eyeless seer, ”that you speak without due consideration of previous experience. You are, or should be, aware of other and as marked differences in food products of upper earth, induced by climate, soil and cultivation. The potato which, next to wheat, rice, or corn, you know supplies nations of men with starchy food, originated as a wild weed in South America and Mexico, where it yet exists as a small, watery, marble-like tuber, and its nearest kindred, botanically, is still poisonous. The luscious apple reached its present excellence by slow stages from knotty, wild, astringent fruit, to which it again returns when escaped from cultivation. The cuc.u.mber is a near cousin of the griping, medicinal cathartic bitter-apple, or colocynth, and occasionally partakes yet of the properties that result from that unfortunate alliance, as too often exemplified to persons who do not peel it deep enough to remove the bitter, cathartic principle that exists near the surface. Oranges, in their wild condition, are bitter, and are used princ.i.p.ally as medicinal agents. Asparagus was once a weed, native to the salty edges of the sea, and as this weed has become a food, so it is possible for other wild weeds yet to do.
Buckwheat is a weed proper, and not a cereal, and birds have learned that the seeds of many other weeds are even preferable to wheat. The wild parsnip is a poison, and the parsnip of cultivation relapses quickly into its natural condition if allowed to escape and roam again.
The root of the tapioca plant contains a volatile poison, and is deadly; but when that same root is properly prepared, it becomes the wholesome food, tapioca. The nut of the African anacardium (cachew nut) contains a nouris.h.i.+ng kernel that is eaten as food by the natives, and yet a drop of the juice of the oily sh.e.l.l placed on the skin will blister and produce terrible inflammations; only those expert in the removal of the kernel dare partake of the food. The berry of the berberis vulgaris is a pleasant acid fruit; the bough that bears it is intensely bitter. Such examples might be multiplied indefinitely, but I have cited enough to ill.u.s.trate the fact that neither the difference in size and structure of the species in the mushroom forest through which we are pa.s.sing, nor the conditions of these bodies, as compared with those you formerly knew, need excite your astonishment. Cultivate a potato in your former home so that the growing tuber is exposed to suns.h.i.+ne, and it becomes green and acrid, and strongly virulent. Cultivate the spores of the intra-earth fungi about us, on the face of the earth, and although now all parts of the plants are edible, the species will degenerate, and may even become poisonous. They lose their flavor under such unfavorable conditions, and although some species still retain vitality enough to resist poisonous degeneration, they dwindle in size, and adapt themselves to new and unnatural conditions. They have all degenerated. Here they live on water, pure nitrogen and its modifications, grasping with their roots the carbon of the disintegrated limestone, affiliating these substances, and evolving from these bodies rich and delicate flavors, far superior to the flavor of earth surface foods. On the surface of the earth, after they become abnormal, they live only on dead and devitalized organic matter, having lost the power of a.s.similating elementary matter. They then partake of the nature of animals, breathe oxygen and exhale carbonic acid, as animals do, being the reverse of other plant existences. Here they breathe oxygen, nitrogen, and the vapor of water; but exhale some of the carbon in combination with hydrogen, thus evolving these delicate ethereal essences instead of the poisonous gas, carbonic acid. Their substance is here made up of all the elements necessary for the support of animal life; nitrogen to make muscle, carbon and hydrogen for fat, lime for bone. This fungoid forest could feed a mult.i.tude. It is probable that in the time to come when man deserts the bleak earth surface, as he will some day be forced to do, as has been the case in frozen planets that are not now inhabited on the outer crust; nations will march through these s.p.a.ces on their way from the dreary outside earth to the delights of the salubrious inner sphere.
Here then, when that day of necessity appears, as it surely will come under inflexible climatic changes that will control the destiny of outer earth life, these constantly increasing stores adapted to nourish humanity, will be found acc.u.mulated and ready for food. You have already eaten of them, for the variety of food with which I supplied you has been selected from different portions of these nouris.h.i.+ng products which, flavored and salted, ready for use as food, stand intermediate between animal and vegetable, supplying the place of both.”
<script>