History of the Fungi of the Rimini Territory

8

All the systems that teach that fungi are mere games of nature and coalesce from putrefaction will be recognized as collapsing of their own accord. Therefore, if anyone, neglecting everything we have said, contends that fungi are nevertheless games of nature and are generated from putrefaction, or from the elongation of plant fibers, etc., I truly do not know what more I could add. Yet, I will say this: if nature at play can produce these organic bodies by its own power, with such artifice and constancy in their species, I do not deny that it could also produce not only Confervae algae/water silk and capillary plants, whose seed remained hidden from botanists almost until our own age, but even more beautiful and perfect plants, and indeed even insects and the so-called more perfect animals, by mere playing.

In the second place, it remains to be investigated whether fungi arise from a peculiar seed, what this seed is, where it lies hidden in fungi, and how the sowing should be performed. Here we shall speak briefly about what more recent researchers have experienced, and what may be concluded with certainty from their experiments, without any precipitation of mind or judgment.

Micheli, a most illustrious Florentine botanist, was the first to suspect that a peculiar seed exists in all fungi. In fistular Agarics gilled fungi and boletes, he observes that it lies hidden in the innermost extremities of the tubes; in lamellate Fungi gilled mushrooms, he thinks that the dust, which is generally efflorescent, should be regarded as the seed; in other genera of fungi, he believes it lies hidden elsewhere, as can be seen in his book titled Nova Plantarum genera New Genera of Plants, page 136. To demonstrate by experiment what he suspected, although he writes that he often labored in vain, it happened that on the 10th of June, 1718, he spread dried leaves of holm oak, oak, laurel, and ash—changed only slightly by putrefaction—upon a table, and dusted them with the powder of various fungi. He then committed them to the earth at Boboli and Monte Oliveto, places suitable for the propagation of fungi. Finally, on the 22nd of September of the same year, at Boboli, he found small fungi born upon those buried leaves, which he discovered had grown larger toward the end of October. Truly, this experiment of Micheli surpassed the skill of the most illustrious men in botany. Yet, in the judgment of a rigid censor, Micheli left the case undecided. Firstly, the experiment is singular, and in physical matters, such singular experiments agitate the minds of physicists but do not compose them. Secondly, Micheli asserts that he saw the small fungi born from the seed, but he does not record that they were of the same species as those from which he had taken the seed, which indeed weakens Micheli's claims. However, Mazzoli...