Chap, i.] from Brunfels to Kaspar Bauhin. 29 



and finally larger and the largest trees. The chapter on Fungi 

 under the section ' Of names ' contains a statement of views on 

 the nature of fungi, such as are often repeated even into the 

 17th century : ' Mushrooms are neither herbs nor roots, neither 

 flowers nor seeds, but merely the superfluous moisture of the 

 earth and .trees, of rotten wood and other rotten things. From 

 such moisture grow all tubera and fungi. This is plain from 

 the fact that all the above-mentioned mushrooms, those especi- 

 ally which are used for eating, grow most when it will thunder 

 or rain, as Aquinas Ponta says. For this reason the ancients 

 paid peculiar regard to them, and were of opinion that tubera, 

 since they come up from no seed, have some connection with 

 the sky ; Porphyrius speaks also in this manner, and says that 

 fungi and tubera are called children of the gods, because they 

 are born without seeds and not as other kinds.' 



We pass over Valerius Cordus, Conrad Gesner, Mattioli 1 , 

 and some other unimportant writers, and turn to Dodoens, 

 de l'Ecluse, and Dalechamps, in whom a marked tendency to 

 orderly arrangement appears, though the principle of arrange- 

 ment in all three lies essentially in points external and accidental, 

 and above all in the relations of the plant- world to mankind. 

 Within the divisions thus artificially formed a constantly 

 increasing attention is paid to natural affinities, but at the same 

 time allied forms are separated without scruple in deference to 

 the artificial principle of classification. It can also be plainly 

 seen, that these writers think more of giving some order to 

 their matter than of discovering the arrangement that will be 

 in conformity with nature. It is impossible to give the reader 

 a good idea of these classifications in our scientific language ; 



1 Pierandrea Mattioli, who was born at Siena in 1501 and died there in 

 1 57 7 j was f° r many years physician at the court of Ferdinand I. He wrote 

 rather in the interests of medicine than of botany ; his herbal, originally 

 a commentary on Dioscorides, was gradually enlarged and went through 

 more than sixty editions and issues in different languages. See Meyer, 

 ' Geschichte der Botanik,' vi. 



