Krieger: History of Mycological Illustration 315 



ancient Greek and Roman writers, Theophrastus, Nikander, 

 Pliny, Galen, and the rest. When there are figures, they are 

 almost without exception extremely poor and almost useless. 

 The earliest published illustrations of fungi that serve us today 

 with any degree of satisfaction in the matter of generic and, in 

 many cases, of specific determination are unquestionably those 

 of Charles de l'Ecluse (Carolus Clusius) published by him in 

 1601 in his work on Hungarian fungi (1601). They are un- 

 colored wood-cuts, rather clumsily done, but, for all that, suf- 

 ficiently well characterized where common well-known species 

 are shown. Much better and more serviceable in taxonomic 

 work are the original water-color paintings from which the wood- 

 cuts were made. These water-color pictures, done by an un- 

 known artist working under the direction of Clusius' Hungarian 

 friend and patron, Boldizsar de Batthyany, were published for 

 the first time in colored, lithographic reproduction by Batthyany's 

 countryman, Dr. Gyula de Istvanffi (19006), just 320 years after 

 they were painted, a circumstance which encourages me to be- 

 lieve that my own plates, now reposing in the Farlow collection, 

 may yet see the light of day. 



The Istvanffi volume embraces 89 plates — not 91, as the title- 

 page declares. One of Dr. H. A. Kelly's 5 book-dealers in Europe 

 wrote to Istvanfri to have him explain the discrepancy. Istvanfri 

 replied that it was due to a typographical error which he could 

 not correct. 



The colored plates are so good that Istvanfri recognizes 112 

 of the 117 figures represented; and Reichardt (1876c) distin- 

 guished 47 genera and 102 species. Especially noteworthy are 

 the figures of Morchella esculenta (PI. 1), Russula foetens (PL 

 8), Russula nigricans (PI. 13), Russula virescens (PL 40), 

 Amanita muscaria (PL 28), Amanitopsis plumb ea (PL 31), Lepi- 

 ota procera (PL 58. Reproduced here, in black-and-white, in 

 PL 27), and Polyporus squamosus (PL 19). One figure, that 

 of Russula foetens, is so well done that the upper surface of the 

 pileus distinctly shows where a slug ate through the substance 



s Editor's Note. — Mr. Krieger is associated with Dr. Howard A. Kelly, of 

 Baltimore, in mycological and scientific artistic work. 



