62 Mr. W.S.Maczeay on certain general Laws regulating 
single exception of Cantharellus; and so truly natural or de- 
pendent upon relations of analogy are these five subdivisions, 
that he proposes to make use of one set of names for all, and in 
fact does in general make use of the same name for analogous 
groups*. Nay more: when he has divided the well-known ge- 
nus Agaricus into five natural series, he observes, ** Singula 
series a naturâ fixe determinata clausa est reliquis parallela. 
Tribus diversarum serierum analogas diu eodem nomine salu- 
tavi.” So that Agaricus is, according to the confession of 
M. Fries, formed of five natural series each closed up; in other 
words, each a circle, and corresponding at their parallel points 
to such a degree, that he declares it possible to assign the same 
names to the analogous groups. 
It were tedious to proceed much further on this subject ; and 
therefore, without entering into the speculations, often unintelli- 
gible and always vague, of Plutarch, Sir Thomas Brown, Dre- 
bel, Linnæus and others, as to the doctrine of quintessence gene- 
rally, we may at once set forth the last argument which shall 
now be produced for the existence of a quinary distribution in 
organized nature. It may be stated thus: In the year 1817 I 
detected a quinary arrangement? in considering a small por- 
tion of coleopterous insects; and in the year 1821 I attempted 
to show that it prevailed generally throughout nature. In the 
same year (1821), and apparently without any view beyond the 
particular case then before him, M. Decandolle stated the natu- 
ral distribution of Cruciferous plants to be quinary. And again, 
in the same year, a third naturalist, without the knowledge of 
either Decandolle’s Mémoire or the Hore Entomologice, and in 
a different part of Europe, publishes what he considers to be the 
natural arrangement of Fungi. Arguing à priori, this third natu- 
* These five names are, Mesopus, Pleuropus, Merisma, Apus, and Rein. 
+ Published in 1819. 
ralist 
