[11] Whoever has time to waste on the unprofitable speculations of the ancients concerning the parentage of funguses, and would like so to waste it, may consult Pliny, lib. xvi. cap. 8, lib. xxii. cap. 23; Hist. Nat. Dioscorides, lib. iii. cap. 78; Athenæus, lib. ii. in the Deipnosophisti; and after them Galen, Clusius, Portæ (Villæ, lib. x.), Imperato (Hist. Nat.), etc. The first really philosophical treatise which ascribes their origin, like that of other plants, to seeds, was published by Micheli, at Florence, in 1720.
[12] Roques.
[13] Vittadini.
[14] ‘Trattati dei Funghi.’ Roma, 1804.
[15] Have not both the words Tode and the stool called after him some etymological, as they have undoubtedly a fanciful, connection with the word tod, death?
[16] Juvenal.
[17] Few minute objects are more beautiful than certain of these mucedinous fungi fungorum. A common one besets the back of some of the Russulæ in decay, spreading over it, especially if the weather be moist, like thin flocks of light wool, presenting on the second day a bluish tint on the surface. Under a powerful magnifier, myriads of little glasslike stalks are brought into view, which bifurcate again and again, each ultimate twig ending in a semilucent head, or button, at first blue, and afterwards black; which, when it comes to burst, scatters the spores, which are then (under the microscope) seen adhering to the sides of the delicate filamentary stalks like so many minute limpets.
[18] Vide the London Docks, passim; where he pays his unwelcome visits, and is in even worse odour than the exciseman.
[19] “Sir Joseph Banks having a cask of wine, rather too sweet for immediate use, he directed that it should be placed in a cellar, that the saccharine it contained might be more decomposed by age; at the end of three years he directed his butler to ascertain the state of the wine, when, on attempting to open the cellar-door, he could not effect it, in consequence of some powerful obstacle; the door was consequently cut down, when 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.”—Chambers’s Journal.
[20] Withering found one of these plants on the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral; the first he had seen!