History of the Fungi of the Rimini Territory

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...aiding Micheli, refutes both objections. Indeed, in a certain dissertation on the origin of fungi, which is read in certain Lucchese monuments titled Memorie sopra la Fisica e Istoria naturale ec. Memoirs on Physics and Natural History, etc. (a work which, although imperfect, shows the perfect fraudulence of the printers), Mazzoli, in Volume I, page 172, says: original: "in riprova di ciò sappia, che avendo trovato un di quei Funghi malefici chiamato da Gasparo Bavino nel suo Pinace FUNGUS FOETIDUS PENIS IMAGINEM REFERENS, e da Giovanni Bavino FUNGUS PHALLOIDES, lo lasciai qualche giorno in una catinella d'acqua, e vidi che dalla sua sommità aveva gettato alcuni granelletti ovali, li quali andavano al fondo del vaso: gli adunai, e posti con la terra in uno dei catini, dove era la Pietra Fungifera, e pochi giorni nacquero cinque o sei di detti Funghi della stessa figura di quello, da cui avea levato il seme." In proof of this, know that having found one of those evil fungi called by Gasparo Bavino in his Pinax [index] FUNGUS FOETIDUS PENIS IMAGINEM REFERENS [Stinking fungus resembling an image of a penis] and by Giovanni Bavino FUNGUS PHALLOIDES, I left it for some days in a basin of water, and I saw that from its summit it had cast some small oval grains, which went to the bottom of the vessel. I gathered them and placed them with earth in one of the basins where the Fungiferous Stone was, and after a few days, five or six of those said fungi were born, of the same figure as that from which I had taken the seed. This notable experiment would resolve every doubt, were it not that a light difficulty arises which overshadows the religious minds of physicists. For various fungiferous stones stones that produce fungi were kindly sent to me by friends living in Rome and Naples, but with all the diligence applied, I gathered no fungi from them except those of the bolete genus. Furthermore, any beginning of such fungi emulates a phallus a stinkhorn fungus, but not a phalloid one. These things are said, however, not to deny faith to the experiment conducted by Mazzoli, but only to narrate what happened to me in such trials, in which cases I attempted to prove that I could obtain nothing certain from experiments regarding the beginning of fungi to be repeated from their own seed.

Moreover, my own experiments, so often repeated by me, did not entirely support Micheli's cause. For I attempted the trial with the seeds of the goblet-shaped fungi of Mentzel. I also committed many fragments of fungi, and many whole ones, to the earth; I boiled many in water and threw the water into places suitable for the vegetation of fungi; often I collected the dust of fungi in a tuberaster a small truffle-like growth, and I always found that I had lost my oil and my labor. Wherefore, we seemed to be gradually abandoning Micheli's camp. That doubt also seemed to be increased and fostered by the fact that the beginning of pileated fungi was usually from a mass of mold, and I had read of some that seemed to have sprouted from the vitiated roots of plants, which are the Fungus B Tab. VIII and Agaricus B Tab. XXXII. Finally, on the 10th of September of the year 1747, it happened that I collected the dust of a certain lamellate fungus upon the sub-putrid leaves of an oak, all of which I deposited under the earth in a place most optimal for the vegetation of fungi. The weather had been calm before, but on the following day...