But for salad, Monsieur Kabelais, excuse our faith in its ever being either salad or pottage ; it may be 

 esculent, we should not like to try, always making very certain indeed that others have sufficiently risked 

 experiment and given their sanction " let it be eaten," before we venture : then and not before, tve eat, and 

 if satisfied that we can do so honestly, recommmd. It would appear from the old herbalists that this fungus 

 possessed or was supposed to possess the same virtues as the tree it grew upon ; green elder being a nos- 

 trum for many things, and the ointment from its leaves, as well as the flowers, still finding a place among 

 medicaments. Gerarde says that boiled in vinegar the Ears of Judas are a cure for sore-throats ; probably the 

 gelatinous quality of the plant corrected the acrimony of the vinegar, thereby softening its rude effect. 



If any of our friends should seek it, they must not expect to find anything hke a human ear : making 

 every allowance for the darkening effect of southern chmate, it is much more hke a bath's or some of the 

 monkey tribe. The colour varies through every shade of brown to cinereous ; in dry old age it is often 

 beset with green Algfe, but tliis is no part of the plant and is common to many funguses. It shakes hke 

 any other jeUy, when in the moist gelatinous state, but is not viscid ; in dry weather it becomes rigid and the 

 velvety pile harsh and rough, but after rains swells out again into the soft india-rubber-like quivering 

 substance, which gives it a place among the Tremellini. 



