VOL. XLIIl.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 43 



Now to consider how far the poison of mushrooms can possibly proceed from 

 animalcules : first, he doubts whether any person was ever injured from eating 

 the common mushroom, oramanita; unless such accident may have proceeded 

 either from eating too many at once, and thereby overloading the stomach ; or 

 from some particular dislike in the constitution ; as we sometimes see, even with 

 regard to honey, cheese, and some of the most innocent parts of our diet ; but 

 which, nevertheless, are by no means to be ranked among poisons. If there 

 were many instances of their being pernicious, such must frequently occur to 

 the practitioners in physic, on account of the vast quantity annually consumed in 

 London ; but he does not remember to have even heard of any such accident ; 

 but many instances occur of the noxious quality of many of the other species of 

 this tribe , nor is it at all wonderful, that the different subjects of this class of 

 vegetables should differ in their effects, more than those of the more perfect 

 kind. The roots of carrot, parsnip, and many others of the umbelliferous class, 

 are daily used as food ; but the water-hemlock, and Lobel's oenanthe, though of 

 the same class, are most certain poisons. 



Here he observes what pains have been taken by naturalists, to distinguish the 

 useful from the pernicious kinds. Among the Romans, the boletus mentioned 

 by Juvenal, on account of the death of the emperor Claudius, is sufficiently 

 described by Pliny ; but among the later writers, Carolus Clusius was of the first 

 of those who, about the middle of the l6th century, being tired with the critics 

 and commentators of the time he lived in, presumed to believe that all know- 

 ledge was not confined to the writings of the Greek, Roman, and Arabian phy- 

 sicians ; because, from the revival of letters in the western world to his time, 

 nothing was regarded, as of any importance, but what was dignified with the 

 authority of antiquity. And hence it came to pass, that when the clouds of ig- 

 norance began to disperse, the epocha of commentators took place ; but many 

 of the descriptions of the plants of Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny, were 

 so very deficient, that little light could thence be acquired ; especially from this 

 last author, who is to be considered as the only Roman naturalist that we have 

 handed down to us ; and it is no wonder, if, among the vast variety of subjects 

 that this most admirable historian treats of, he is, in many instances, rather to 

 be considered as an enumerator, than as a describer. 



There arose, then, such heats and disputations among the critics on those authors, 

 very often about trifles, that they rather increased than diminished the ignorance 

 of those times. This excellent Clusius, finding that a thorough knowledge of 

 nature was necessary, not only to understand rightly the ancients, but to lay the 

 foundation of future knowledge, was desirous to join careful observations of his 

 own to those which were to be acquired from books. How much he travelled, 

 and what progress he made in this undertaking, his many valuable works are the 



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