History of the Fungi of the Rimini Territory

11

...a few years ago entered Italy with a great display of virtue in botany, we are most fully taught about the generation of fungi, so that Micheli's experiments might attain a new light.

Therefore, I consider the case regarding the generation of fungi to be already judged by Micheli and Gleditsch. What, however, if it happens by chance that while someone, by repeating such experiments, sees fungi of a different species born from those from which he had taken the seed? Would he turn his mind again to putrefaction and the games of nature? He would be imprudent, surely, if he were to think that in his mind.

For no sane man is numbered among physicists in this our age who is not persuaded that all plants are generated from their own seed. Yet, in plants about which it cannot be doubted that they arise from their own seed, these things worthy of admiration are observed. The Tithymalus Cyparissias cypress spurge original: "C. B. P. 291" differs so much in appearance from another, which is called by the same author Tithymalus Cyparissias marked with saffron dots, that the same Bauhin, Gesner, Thalius, and Camerarius state they are two different species. Yet, with J. Planco pointing it out, I have often seen both sprout from the same root; wherefore, I recognized that the second species of Tithymalus spurge is a defect of the other. Furthermore, when in the year 1749 I went to Bologna, that I might visit things that agreed with my studies and acquire friends within that most illustrious assembly of men, it happened, indeed, that in the most elegant garden of the honest and learned man Ferdinand Bassi, with whom I had contracted a friendship, I received from his own observations and trials that which demands the admiration of botanists. Our Bassi, therefore, most studious of natural things, and especially of botany, sparing no labors and expenses, acquired for himself seeds of most elegant Caryophylli carnations from Batavia. Wherefore, when he had committed to the earth the seeds which he had received from a yellow carnation called by the Batavians Citron geel lemon yellow, and from another species of yellow carnation called Oranje orange by the same Batavians, it happened that from the seeds of the first, he admired the birth of white carnations, rose-colored ones, and some straw-colored ones. From the seeds of the other species, however, whose golden yellow was sprinkled with reddish streaks, he saw others born white, others of a most intense blood-red color, and others yellow, luxuriating in a wonderful way with reddish streaks. Regarding this matter, I remember that while I was having a conversation with the illustrious man Joseph Montius, Professor of Botany publicly at Bologna, he said to me that unless the religious diligence and faith of Bassi himself were known to him, he would hardly have given credit to anyone. Finally, while I was writing these things, there came to my hands a dissertation on certain hybrids, and especially on the Ranunculus buttercup...