Ref. 1

The word seed here, or wherever else introduced into the present work, is to be understood in its popular acceptation; correctly speaking, spores differ from seeds in the absence of an apparent embryo; but in a more catholic sense spores are seeds, since both are germinating granules, producing each after their kind.

Ref. 2

At from twenty to thirty baiocchi, i.e. at about 1s. 3d. a pound.

Ref. 3

The population of Rome is only 154,000; that of Naples, 360,000; and that of Venice, 180,000.

Ref. 4

The Chinese present a striking contrast with ourselves in the care which they bestow on their esculent vegetation, "Some days since, M. Stanislas Julien presented to the Academy of Sciences, at Paris, a Chinese work, which merits a word or two of notice in the present circumstances of agricultural Europe. It is a treatise, in six volumes, with plates, entitled the 'Anti-Famine Herbal; ' and contains the descriptions and representations of four hundred and fourteen different plants, whose leaves, rinds, stalks, or roots are fitted to furnish food for the people, when drought, ravages of locusts, or the overflow of the great rivers have occasioned a failure of rice and grain. Of this book the Chinese (government annually prints thousands, and distributes them gratuitously in those districts which are most exposed to natural calamities. Such an instance of provident solicitude on the part of the Chinese Government for the suffering classes may be suggestive here at home. A more general knowledge of the properties and capabilities of esculent plants would be an important branch of popular education." - Athenæum, Nov. 16, 1846,

Ref. 5

There are three kinds of esculent funguses in Italy to which the epithet albus might apply, viz, the Amanita alba, of Persoon, the Lycoperdon Bovista, Linn. (or common puff-ball), and Agaricus campestris, Linn. (our common mushroom). The first kind grows in woods, and the second in dry uncultivated spots, whereas Ovid mentions those in conjunction with the Mallow (Malva), which grows in moist meadow-land; it is probable, therefore, that lie here alludes to the Pratajolo, or meadow mushroom, or to that variety of it called from its whiteness "boule de neige."

Ref. 6

Etymol. ad locum

Ref. 7

Well-fed domestic pigs, on the authority of a friend, refuse it; but possibly, in the absence of full supplies of corn, they might be less dainty.

Ref. 8

Vittadini assures as that the "slips of dried boletus, sold on strings, are as frequently from these kinds as from the Boletus edulis itself; notwithstanding which, no accident was ever known to happen from the indiscriminate use of either."

Ref. 9

Dioscorides, who lived in the time of Nero, says that pigs dig up "truffles" in spring. Matthiolus, in his commentaries, apeaks of an inferior, smooth-barked, red truffle known to the ancients, to which the above remark of Dioscorides perhaps applies; certainly it docs not apply to the black truffle, which begins to come into the Roman market in November, and is over long before the spring.

Ref. 10

The Thracians are said to have intended this same misy under the new epithet of [GR 4], as though it were produced by thunder, unless indeed, as in Theoph. lib. i. cap. ix., we should read [GR 4], in which case they meant the Lycoperdon giganteum, a fungus frequently as big as, and in the form of, the human head: whence its name of cranium.

Ref. 11

Whoever has time to waste on the unprofitable speculations of the ancients concerning the parentage of funguses, and would like so to waste it, may consult Pliny, lib, xvi. cap. 8, lib. xxii. cap. 23; Hist. Nat. Dioscorides, lib. iii. cap. 78; Athenaeus, lib. ii. in the Deipnosophisti; and after them alen, Clusius, Porte (Villae, lib. x.), Imperato (Hist. Mat.), etc. The first really philosophical treatise which ascribes their origin, like that of other plants, to seeds, was published by Micheli, at Florence, in 1720.

Ref. 12

'Trattati dei Funghi.' Roma, 1804.

Ref. 13

Have not both the words Tode and the stool called after him some etymological, as they have undoubtedly a fanciful, connection with the word tod, death ?

Ref. 14

Few minute objects are more beautiful than certain of these mucedinous fungi fungorum. A. common one besets the back of some of the Russulae in decay, spreading over it, especially if the weather be moist, like thin flocks of light wool, presenting on the second day a bluish tint on the surface. Under a powerful magnifier, myriads of little glasslike stalks are brought into view, which bifurcate again and again, each ultimate twig ending in a semilucent head, or button, at first blue, and afterwards black; which, when it comes to burst, scatters the spores, which arc then (under the microscope) seen adhering to the aides of the delicate filamentary stalks like so many minute limpets.

Ref. 15

Vide the London Docks, passim; where lie pays his unwelcome visits, and is in even worse odour than the exciseman.

Ref. 16

"Sir Joseph Banks having a cask of wine, rather too sweet for immediate use, he directed that it should be placed in a cellar, that the saccharine it contained might be more decomposed by age; at tile end of three years he directed his butler to ascertain the state of the wine, when, on attempting to open the cellar-door, he could not effect it, in consequence of some powerful obstacle; the door was consequently cut down, when the cellar was found to be completely filled with a fungous production) so firm, that it was necessary to use an axe for its removal. This appeared to have grown from, or to have been nourished by, the decomposing particles of the wine, the cask being empty, and carried up to the ceiling, where it was supported by the fungus." - Chambers's Journal.

Ref. 17

Withering found one of these plants on the top of St. Paul's Cathedral; the first he had seen!

Ref. 18

"When healthy caterpillars arc placed within reach of a silkworm that has been destroyed by the Botrytis, they, too, contract the disease, and at last perish." - Chambers's Journal, October, 1815.

Ref. 19

A species of Polystrix is affected, whilst alive, with a parasitic kind of fungus, called Sphaeria, which grows out of it, and feeds upon it.

Ref. 20

Several of the French surgeons have given recitals of cases where, on removal of the bandages from sore surfaces, they have found a collection of funguses growing upon them, generally about the size of the finger (Lemery); one of them adds, that having reapplied the wrappings, a second batch came out in the course of twenty-four hours, and this for several days consecutively.

Ref. 21

For an accurate description of these funguses, the reader is referred to the excellent work of Mr, Berkeley.

Ref. 22

These, beautiful, but fleeting as beauty's blush, generally perish within a few hours; but I have seen some which, after a potting of 2000 years, retained their original hues unblemished, for they had been potted with the town of Pompeii, and are preserved with the other frescoes upon its walls.

Ref. 23

The Mitrati are not a very numerous class, of which the Morel may be taken as the type.

Ref. 24

The Cupulati, so called in consequence.

Ref. 25

Agaricus comatus, in allusion no doubt to which Plautus says of the Lord Chancellor of his day, "Fungino genere est, capiti se totum tegit,"—that his wig was so long as to hide his whole person.

Ref. 26

The Nidularias do so.

Ref. 27

The surface is rough with elevated papillae, the structure fibrous, the flesh softly elastic, the colour bright red, looking like the tongue in the worst forms of gastro-enterite, with which its cold clammy surface when touched offers no correspondence.

Ref. 28

Agaricus narcoticus, Batsch Fascic. vol. ii. pl. 81.

Ref. 29

These last, placed in a wineglass, over a sheet of white paper, frequently disperse the seminal dust over a ring of twice the natural dimensions of the Agaric.

Ref. 30

"One dark night, about the beginning of December, while passing along the streets of the Villa de Natividade, I observed some boys amusing themselves with some luminous object, which I at first supposed to be a kind of large fire-fly; but, on making inquiry, I found it to be a beautiful phosphorescent fungus, belonging to the genus Agaricus, and was told that it grew abundantly in the neighbourhood, on the decaying leaves of a dwarf palm. Next day I obtained a great many specimens, and found them to vary from one to two and a half inches across. The whole plant gives out at night a bright phosphorescent light, of a pale greenish hue, similar to that emitted by the larger fire-flies, or by those curious, soft-bodied, marine animals, the Pyrosomae; from this circumstance, and from growing on a palm, it is called by the inhabitants ' Flor do Coco; ' the light given out by a few of these fungi in a dark room, was sufficient to read by. It proved to be quite a new species, and, since my return from Brazil, has been described by the Rev. M. J. Berkeley under the name of Agaricus Gardneri, from preserved specimens which I brought home," - Travels in the Interior of Brazil, 1846.

Ref. 31

Hence it was called [GR 6] (vide Theoph. Lib. vol. i. cap. 9) by the ancients. Cesalpinus describes it under the name of Peziza, and reports that it is common in the woods of Pisa, whence men gather to cat them. We read also, in an ancient Italian writer (Cicinelli), that the environs of Padua produce enormous puff-balls, of which one (unless this author was given to puffing) measured not less than two feet across, in one direction, being upwards of a foot and a half in its least diameter. It was bis; enough, he says, to have written on its rind the celebrated inscription attributed by Dion Cassius to the Dacians, which they presented to the Emperor, "in quo scriptum erat Latinis literis Burros sociosque omnes cum hortari ut domum reverteretur pacemque coleret." Other authors also (Alph. de Tuberibus,—not truffles, but puff-balls,—cap. xvii.; Imperato, Hist. Nat, Hoi. vol. xxvii. cap. 5) speak of puff-balls of sixty and one hundred pounds weight.

Ref. 32

Hist. Plant, vol. ii. p. 275.

Ref. 33

Villae, lib. vol. x. cap. 80.

Ref. 34

By this word, however, the vulgar generally understood the Cantharellus cibarius.

Ref. 35

This species, which is somewhat rare in England, occurred in abundance this year (1847) in the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells. I found four specimens of it on the oak-roots in the Grove, one of which rose nearly a foot from the ground, measured considerably more than two and a half feet across, and weighed from eighteen to twenty pounds; the other specimens were of much smaller dimensions.

Ref. 36

Robert Scott, Act. Linn. Soc. vol. viii. p. 202.

Ref. 37

Amadou is largely used in Italy, where it is called esca; the Latins likewise knew it by this name, though their more common appellation for it was fomes; the Byzantine Greeks hellenicized esca into [GR 7] which was their word for it; the ancient Greeks c alled it [GR 7]. Salmasius tells us how it used to be made in his time, which indeed was the same as now: the fungus was first boiled, then beaten to pieces in a mortar, next hammered out to deprive it of its woody fibres, and lastly, being steeped in a str ong solution of nitre, was left to dry in the sun. It appears, on the testimony of the anonymous author of the article "Fungo" in the 'Dizionario Classico di Medicina,' and that it is also eaten when young; but I cannot speak of it from personal experience : - "In primà eta mangiasi colto di fresco affettato e condito d'ogni modo; specialmente nelle provincie di Belluno ed Udine, o salasi per la quadragesima,"

Ref. 38

"Di questo fungo servavanosene i barbieri in cambio delle strugghie dette più volgaremente codette, atte a far riprendere il perduto filo a loro rasoi."

Ref. 39

"This is the 'Moucho more' of the Russians, Kamtchadales, and Koriaks, who use it for intoxication ; they sometimes eat it dry, but more commonly immersed in a liquor made from the Epilobium, and when they drink this liquor, they are seized with convulsions in all their limbs, followed with that kind of raving which accompanies a burning fever. They personify this mushroom, and, if they are urged by its effects to suicide, or any other dreadful crime, they pretend to obey its commands; to fit themselves f or premeditated assassination they recur to the use of the Moucho more." - Rees's Cyclopedia, art. "Agaric."

Ref. 40

In such cases the minute fungus is probably absorbed in ovo and disseminated with the sap through the plant; as this ascends from the root, it remains undeveloped however till the corn is in ear, at which time it finds in the nascent grain the necessary conditions for its own development.

Ref. 41

The mischief thus produced by dry-rot may be arrested by steeping the affected timber in a solution of corrosive sublimate, which, forming a chemical anion with the juices of the woody fibre, prevents their being abstracted by the dry-rot, that would els e have maintained itself and spread at their expense.

Ref. 42

A reputation that revives may not be so good as one that survives, but the very fact of such revival shows that the good opinion formerly entertained was not altogether groundless.

Ref. 43

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary gives 'Preconize .......to commend or extol publicly....' [From the medieval Latin præconizare] - Mike Walton

Ref. 44

Enslin was in the habit of uniting this Polyporus with Peruvian Bark, and obtained from it the happiest results ; "Omnium mihi arridet connubium ejus cum cortice Peruviano" - to which "connubium," no doubt, some of its good effects are to be attributed.

Ref. 45

Haller relates, that the inhabitants of Piedmont are in the habit of awallowing a small piece of this Agaric, when they have drunk with their water some of those small leeches in which it abounds. Bomarc mentions of this same Agaric, that the inhabitants of Balcu use it in powder to heal blains in their cattle.

Ref. 46

It is the Frenchman's heart! "J'ai mal an coeur" means, as every one knows, in the French tongue, not 'I am sick at heart,' as it professes to say, but 'I am sick at stomach'!

Ref. 47

The phrase "I like it, but it does not like me," which one sometimes hears at table, having a reference to some particular idiosyncrasy of the party who makes the remark, does not invalidate the truth of this general proposition.

Ref. 48

Pope. Mead, if anybody, ought to have been good authority on the subject of this particular diet. He had written, ex professo, upon poisons; and the Florentine mycologist Micheli had dedicated several newly-discovered funguses to him. He was therefore both a Toxicologist and a Mycologist.

Ref. 49

"No thought too bold, no airy dream too light,
That will not prompt your Theorist to write;
No fact so stubborn, and no proof so strong,
Will e'er convince him he could argue wrong." - Crabbe.

Ref. 50

Broussais divides inflammatory dyspepsia into five parts or acts. That Leach of leeches, whose word once passed for more than it was worth, came at last to see himself and his sangsues utterly abandoned, and to have the mortification of lecturing in his old age to empty benches. "Quantum mutatus ab illo" of less than twenty years before, and who had been the cause of as much innocent bloodshedding as Napoleon himself, and used to kill his patients that his leeches might be fed!