62 Mr. W. S. Macleay oii certain general Lazca regulating 



single exception of Cantharcllus ; 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 Agaricns into Jive natural series, he observes, " Singula 

 series a natura fixe determinata clausa est reliquis parallela. 

 Tribus diversarum serierum analogas diu eodem nomine salu- 

 tavi." So that Agaricns 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, Linnaeus 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 

 <ietected a quinary arrangementt in considering a small poi^ 

 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 MSmoire or the HorcB Entomologica, and in 

 a different part of Europe, publishes what he considers to be the 

 natural arrangement of Fungi. Arguing ^ priori, this third natu- 



* These five names are, Mesopus, Pleuropus, Merisma, jipus, and Resupinatus. 

 t Published in 1819. 



ralist 



