2 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



The view generally held before the time of Micheli on the origin 

 of fungi was that these plants arise by spontaneous generation. The 

 physician and poet, Nicander {circa 185, B.C.), referred to a fungus as 

 being "an evil ferment of the earth. "^ From the writings of Theo- 

 phrastus, Plutarch, Martial, Pliny, and others, it is made evident that 

 the old Greeks and Romans held the view that Truffles are produced 

 through the action of lightning during thunder-storms.^ Plutarch 

 actually has a long discourse in his Table Talk entitled "Why Truffles 

 are thought to be produced by Thunder" in which it is proved to the 

 satisfaction of the talkers that Truffles owe their existence to lightning 

 which, being mixed with heat, pierces into the earth and so alters it 

 as to form the fungi subterraneously. The delightful argument is 

 put forward that since, during thunder-storms, fîame comes from moist 

 vapours and deafening noises from soft clouds, there need be no sur- 

 prise that, when lightning strikes the ground, Truffles should spring 

 into existence.' 



Phanias who was quoted by Athenaeus in the Third Century, A.D., 

 said that Fungi and Truffles are like Ferns in that "they produce neither 

 bloom nor any trace of generation by buds or seeds. "^ That the Greeks 

 and Romans took notice of the lamellae of the Agaricineae is shown by 

 the fact that they mistook certain simple corals which have radiating 

 calcareous plates, for fungi turned to stone ;^ but there is nothing in 

 the classical writings to suggest that the ancients ever observed the 

 spore-dust which the lamellae give forth. 



The Revival of Learning in the Sixteenth Century brought new 

 life to the science of Botany. A large number of botanical works 

 known as Herbals were printed. The first ones were simply cornmen- 

 taries on Dioscorides, a Greek physician, who lived in the time of 

 Nero and Vespasian and who had described about five hundred kinds of 

 plants in his Materia Medica. The Herbalists had a great respect for 

 classical authority. One of the consequences of this was that they 

 accepted the views of the ancients in respect to the nature and origin 

 of fungi. Thus, in 1552 Bock.^ in his Herbal of the plants of Germany, 

 said: "Fungi and Truffles are neither herbs, nor roots, nor flowers, nor 

 seeds, but merely the superfluous m.oisture of earth, of trees, of rotten 

 wood, and of other rotting things. This is plain from the fact that all 



1 Nicander, Alexipharmaca, 521-536. 



2 Cf. A. H. R. Buller, The Fungus Lore of the Greeks and Romans, Trans. Brit. 

 Mycological Soc, 1915. 



^ Plutarch, Symposiaca, Book IV, Question 2. 

 ^ Phanias, apiid Athenaeus, Deipnosoph., II, 56-59. 

 ^ Theophrastus, apud Athenaeus, loc. cit., II, 61, f. 



^ Bock (Hieronymus Tragus), De Stirpium maxime earum quae in Germania 

 nostra nascuntur usitatis, etc., Argent., 1552, p. 942. 



