History of the Fungi of the Kingdom of Naples

"nor investigated by the talents of those who came before"; therefore I cherish the certain hope that I have undertaken a labor that is neither ungrateful nor superfluous. For, apart from four species, almost all of the dangerous ones engraved by our Fabio Colonna in his Ecphrasis Description (1); some of the edible kind related by native names by Giovanni Battista Porta in chapters LXX and LXXI of book X of his Villa (2), who, as Clusius advises, "most diligently embraced in a special chapter whatever the ancients left written about fungi" (3), and very few outlined by Vincenzo Petagna (4) and Michele Tenore (5) in their own institutions of botany: truly no one else up to these times could deservedly boast of having traversed these native plants; although among us, in every place, they abound plentifully and in various kinds, just like any other family. For such differences of regions and soil, and the countless plants that are observed among us, provide them with a convenient seat and most abundant nourishment: which wonderful service of attendance Nature presents for observation in all plants, to such a degree that it allows no vegetable at all, indeed no part of any, whether green, or dried, or macerated, to lack them. Nothing, therefore, should move us if new and rarer ones always reveal themselves most easily.

(1) Rome, 1616, pages 335-339.
(2) Frankfurt, 1592, pages 764-770.
(3) See Brief history of fungi observed in Pannonia, at the end of History of rarer plants, Antwerp, 1601, page 288.
(4) Botanical Institutions, Naples, 1785, vol. V, pages 2112-2136.
(5) Course of botanical lessons, vol. IV (Universal Medical Flora, and Particular Flora of the province of Naples), Naples, 1823, part I, section 2, pages 238-260.

A diamond-shaped printer's ornament is depicted.