16 PKOTECTION OF PLANTS — H)22-2o 



botany. It is the very loiuidatioii of the science, but with tlic Ki'ii<bial perfec- 

 tion of iho microscope, there arose another branch — morphology, which at- 

 tracted the attention of many workers and reacted most favorably on taxonomic 

 botany. It fj;ave the key to the answer of many (luestions on structure, rela- 

 tionship, sexuality and spotilaiieous p;eneration. Morphology was very quickly 

 followed by plani j)liysiol()gy, a brancli which involved amore intensive study of 

 chemistry and other rehited sciences. Although ihe attention of these early 

 students was din-cted primarily to flowering plants, they were not slow to reco- 

 gnize fungi ajid ot her non-fiowering ()lants. However, tlieir knoAvledge of fungi 

 was meager and confused with superstitious ideas fo]- many years. I'^ungi were 

 supposed by many as late as the 18th century to be (lu(^ to spontaneous genera- 

 tion. Nicander 185 B. C. said that they were "(ivil ferments of the earth". 

 The Greek and Roman philosophers ))elieved that fungi were produced by 

 lightning and that corals were fungi turned to stone. The ideas of the 16th cen- 

 tury wej'e expressed by J^ock (1552) who wrote — "Mushrooms are neither herbs 

 nor roots, neither flowers nor seeds, but merel}^ the superfluous moisture of the 

 earth and trees, of rotten wood and other rotten things. Froin such moisture 

 grow all tubera and fungi. This is plain from the fact that all the above 

 mentioned mushrooms, those especially which are used for eating, grow most 

 when it will thunder or rain, as Aquinias Porta says. Vor these reasons the 

 ancients paid peculiar regard to them, and were of the o))inion that tubera, 

 since they (;ome from no seed, have some onnection with the sky; Poiphyrius 

 speaks also in this manner and says that fungi and tub(Ma are called the child- 

 ren of the gods, because they arc born without seeds and not as other kinds." 



In the latter pait of the 16th century (1591) Porta (a Neapolitan) came to 

 the conclu>sion that all plants came from seeds, but the idea of spontaneous gene- 

 ration was so firndy fixed in tlu> minds of the other workers that this view was 

 not generally accepted until nearly 200 years later. It is unnecessary to say 

 that the studies on the fungi up to this time were devoted almost entirely to the 

 fleshy forms. The rapid (l(>velopment (A the niicroscope during the 17th centu- 

 ry enabled Rol)ert Hooke, Malphigi, Leeuwenhook, Tournefort and others to 

 extend their studies to the molds and other small forms, but did not overcome 

 the ideas of spontanc'ous genera tion. 'J'he first great epoch in the study of fungi 

 dates from Micheli, who in 1729 f)ublished the results on collecting and sowing 

 the spores of many fungi. He ol)tained results which were remarkable when 

 we take into consideration the crutle methods he must have used. The studies 

 of Micheli stimulated a new field of research which was given a new impulse 

 by Persoon, De Candalle, Schweinitz, Fries and their contemporaries of the 

 early part of the 19th century. They laid the foundations of modern taxono- 

 mic mycology without regard to existing or future economic relations. 



