History of the Fungi of the Rimini Territory

months of fermentation. For who does not see how thin the seed of fungi must be, so that it can be conceived with easy labor to fly through the air, as the seeds of capillary plants are accustomed to do? Wherefore, it could have chanced to slip upon such a meninge, and upon the lichen, before each was enclosed in a vessel, and afterwards, with fermentation excited, unfold within a year? Nor are we moved that nothing of fungi grew further in that phial of Bartolutius, since that seven-month fermentation could indeed have brought about the unfolding of the first fungi, but not the perfecting of the seed. Finally, even if the seed had arrived at its maturity, many things were present to prohibit new germination. For corrupted air was present, a corrupted matrix was present, corrupted water was present. Did not all these things exist when the first ones sprouted? They were indeed present, but then they were only fermenting, not corrupted and putrid. For although fungi require the fermentation of the matrix to unfold, in places where the air, water, and matrix are entirely corrupted, no plant is accustomed to arise.

Neither the bladders of elms, nor various galls, nor the vices of leaves or roots, do anything to support the fortuitous generation of fungi, and one should suspect them as diseases of plants, just as leeks, edemas, wolves A term for malignant ulcers or tumors., and other such inconveniences of the human body. For all those vices do not have roots, as fungi are accustomed to have, but the fibers of those plants are continuous with such vices; furthermore, those same vices arise only in living plants, always having something of the plant upon which they grow; such vices do not arise in all plants indiscriminately, but only in peculiar ones; furthermore, the industry of insects and the manner of wounds inflicted upon plants to deposit eggs, and the place upon which the wound is inflicted by insects, and the diversity of insects, contribute much to the production of the diversity of those diseases. Thus the black poplar has certain galls among us, which differ from all others, and in no way agree with those of the oak; thus the galls of oaks, which are various in species, according to the various species of insects whose bite affects their branches, always sprout on oaks, and not on other plants. Thus the sponge Bedeguar rose gall is found only on the Cynorrhodon wild rose/dog rose, which cannot be said of fungi. Wherefore, whoever has reflected more attentively with his mind upon those things which have been said by us thus far, drawn from our most constant observations, and has compared the suppositions of various authors, upon which their systems rest, with our observations, truly the same