6 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



sporophore.^ The Monilia is represented as consisting of chains of 

 oidia. There is one drawing of a branched myceHum Hke that of 

 PenicilHum.^ and another showing mycehum, sporophores, and spores, 

 all in connection with one another.* The apperception of microscopic 

 plants by the early observers was naturally influenced by a phanero- 

 gamic bias, and Malpighi, like his predecessor Hooke, failed to inter- 

 pret the spores correctly: he regarded the sporangiophore with the 

 spores as an inflorescence, and the spores themselves as florets. Mal- 

 pighi also gave an account of the development of a small Agaric (his 

 Fungus) growing on wood. From its shape and from the hairs, each 

 crowned with a drop of fluid, the species may have been Psathyrella 

 disseminata or one of the smaller Coprini. A network of hyphse 

 on the surface of the wood was observed and from it the fruit-body 

 was seen to spring, but no mention is made of seeds in the text, so 

 that it is evident that Malpighi failed to discover reproductive bodies 

 in fungi of the Mushroom type. 



In summing up the chapter to which reference has just been 

 made, Malpighi says that it is evident that the Mistletoe is propagated 

 by seeds and, as for the rest of the plants which grow on others, "up 

 to the present we do not know how they are multiplied and born; 

 especially among these are the Fungi and Mucedo. Various are the 

 substances on which Fungi may arise; and as I have been able to see, 

 for the most part they spring up either on wood or on pieces of it; 

 and at their beginning there grows luxuriantly a large network of 

 filaments from which, when they are at length united into a bundle, a 

 stalk is produced. Wherefore either Fungi, Mucedo, and Moss have 

 their own seed, by which their species is propagated, or they sprout 

 from the growth of fragments of themselves as happens in other plants."^ 

 It is also suggested that the seeds or pieces may be blown about by 

 the wind and thus spread from place to place. Malpighi, therefore, 

 unlike Hooke, was not disposed to believe in the spontaneous genera- 

 tion of fungi but favoured the more rational seed theory. 



The investigations of Hooke and Malpighi were soon followed up 

 by Leeuwenhoek.^ This Dutch naturalist who, like Hooke, examined 

 a great variety of minute objects, was the first observer not only of the 

 Hydra and Rotifers but also of the red corpuscles of the human blood, 



1 lUd., Fig. 108, D, L, M, N, R, S. 



2 Ibid., Fig. 109, T, V. 



3 Ibid., Fig. 108, R, S. 

 ^Ibid., p. 67. 



^ Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723). For his life and work vide Miall, The 

 Early Naturalists, their Lives and Work, London, 1912, pp. 200-223. Leeuwen- 

 hoek's works, translated by Samuel Hoole into English from the Dutch and Latin 

 editions, were published in London in 1789. 



