COPRINUS MICACEUS 331 



dense clusters about the stumps of Elms, Poplars, Beeches, and other 

 trees, or above buried roots. Sometunes hundreds of fruit-bodies 

 spring up simultaneously in one place and by their very numbers 

 become so conspicuous that every passer-by, whether a botanist or 

 not, is compelled to take notice of them and ask himself the question : 

 how came they there ? 



Historical Remarks. — Coprinus micaceus, on account of its 

 common occurrence, early attracted the attention of mycologists, 

 and it was illustrated in a rough wood-cut by the famous botanist 

 Clusius as early as 1601 in the very first monograph on fungi 

 that was ever published.^ It is now well known that Coprinus 

 micaceus, like other Coprini, is edible ; but Clusius thought that it 

 was poisonous and placed it in the sixteenth genus of his Fungi 

 perniciales. 



The hymenium of Coprinus micaceus was examined by Link in 

 1809, but he entirely misunderstood its true nature.^ What we 

 now know as basidia were thought by him to be thecae resembling 

 asci, and he stated that each theca contains four series of spores. 

 His erroneous illustration, showing the basidia as asci, was copied 

 into Nees von Esenbeck's textbook of fungi ^ in 1817 and was every- 

 where accepted as accurate. The powerful influence of suggestion 

 was never more manifest ; for, for a long time, with Link's illus- 

 tration before them, mycologist after mycologist followed one 

 another like sheep in discovering asci in the hymenium of Basidio- 

 mycetes. Among these misled mycologists were Ditmar, Nees von 

 Esenbeck, Fries, Ehrenberg, Greville, Desmazieres, Klotzsch, 

 Krombholz, Corda, and Vittadini.^ Thus it came about that for 

 almost thirty years after the publication of Link's paper it was 



1 C. Clusius, Rariorum plantarum historia. Fungorum in Pannoniis observa- 

 torum brevis historia, Antwerpiae, 1601, p. 282. The Brevis Historia of Clusius 

 was re-published in 1900 by G. de Istvanffi for a tercentenary celebration. In 

 an appendix to the Brevis Historia Clusius illustrated and described a few fungi 

 not supposed to have been included in the Brevis Historia ; and among these, 

 apparently, is Coprinus micaceus (base of p. 293). 



2 H. F. Link, " Nova plantarum genera e classe Lichenum, Algarum, Fungorum," 

 Schrader's neues Journ.f. d. Bot., iii, 1809, pp. 10-15. 



3 Nees von Esenbeck, Das System der Pike und Schwamme, Wiirzburg, 1817, 

 Tab. XXV. 



* Illustrations of basidia represented as asci were published by all these authors. 



