Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/49

 and finally larger and the largest trees. The chapter on Fungi under the section 'Of names' contains a statement of views on the nature of fungi, such as are often repeated even into the 17th century: 'Mushrooms are neither herbs nor roots, neither flowers nor seeds, but merely the superfluous moisture of the earth and trees, of rotten wood and other rotten things. From such moisture grow all tubera and fungi. This is plain from the fact that all the above-mentioned mushrooms, those especially which are used for eating, grow most when it will thunder or rain, as Aquinas Ponta says. For this reason the ancients paid peculiar regard to them, and were of opinion that tubera, since they come up from no seed, have some connection with the sky; Porphyrius speaks also in this manner, and says that fungi and tubera are called children of the gods, because they are born without seeds and not as other kinds.'

We pass over Valerius Cordus, Conrad Gesner, Mattioli and some other unimportant writers, and turn to Dodoens, de l'Écluse, and Dalechamps, in whom a marked tendency to orderly arrangement appears, though the principle of arrangement in all three lies essentially in points external and accidental, and above all in the relations of the plant-world to mankind. Within the divisions thus artificially formed a constantly increasing attention is paid to natural affinities, but at the same time allied forms are separated without scruple in deference to the artificial principle of classification. It can also be plainly seen, that these writers think more of giving some order to their matter than of discovering the arrangement that will be in conformity with nature. It is impossible to give the reader a good idea of these classifications in our scientific language;