894 Mr* Macltrti/ on certain general Laws regulating [Nov. 



number to be four, and we investigate the signification attached 

 by him to this proposition, we discover that it is in effect five. 

 Iiow M. Fries was led to the number four, we have already 

 endeavoured to Explain ; and it is truly worthy of observation, 

 as an almost conclusive argument for the determinate number 

 being five, that M. Fries himself is at last obliged to adopt it. 

 This open abandonment of his theoretical number four, which 

 we have seen that he had virtually abandoned before, takes 

 place moreover in that part of his work which, relating to the 

 more minute groups, is therefore most independent of theory, 

 and most subjected to the keenness of practical observers. 

 Here, in brief, he finds himself tied down to stubborn facts, and 

 it is rather interesting to mark the result. The only genera of 

 Hymenomycetes Pileati which he discovers to be divisible are, 

 Agaricus, Cantharellus, Thelephora, Hydnumy Boletus, Polyporui, 

 and Dcedalea ; some of which, as Agaricus, are, as he says, of 

 the first dignity ; others, as Cantharellus, of the second.* Now 

 every one of these genera, or at least their typical groups, are 

 divided by M. Fries himself into five, with the single exception 

 of Cantharellus ; and so truly natural or dependent upon rela- 

 tions of analogy are these five subdivisions, that he proposes 

 to make use of one set of names for all, and in fact does in gene- 

 ral make use of the same name for analogous groups.^ Nay 

 more : when he has divided the well-known genus Agaricus into 

 five natural series, he observes, " Singula series a natura fix^ 

 determinata clausa est reliquis paralTela. Tribus diversarum 

 serierum analogas diu eodem nomine salutavi. So that Agaric 

 cus 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 unintel- 

 ligible and always vague, of Plutarch, Sir Thomas Brown, Dre- 

 bel, Linnaeus and others, as to the doctrine of qimit essence 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 J in considering a small portion 

 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. DecandoUe stated the natu- 

 ral distribution of Cruciferous plants to be quinary. And again, 



• The groups here said to be of the second dignity, appear to be of the same degree 

 with thegenRTjJ Phanocus xnAScarabcens of the Ilorcc Entomologicce. 

 f These five names are, Mesopus, Pleuropus, Merisma, Jpus, and Resupinatua, 

 J Published in 1819. 



