FUNGUS EATING. I I 



which Dr Badham declares that the " royal boletus " 

 served to Caesar was the Agariats Ccesarea, so called 

 in honour of the event. 



Allusions to fungi in the ancient classics have been 

 so admirably collated and detailed by the Rev. W. 

 Houghton^i that it is only necessary to allude to his 

 treatise as the most complete and exhaustive on this 

 subject in any European language. Nevertheless 

 there are one or two quotations specially applicable 

 to fungus eating to which reference may be made 

 here. Celsus says, " If any one shall have eaten 

 noxious fungi let him eat radishes with vinegar and 

 water, or with salt and vinegar ; these may be 

 distinguished from the wholesome kinds by their ap- 

 pearance, and can be rendered serviceable by a mode 

 of cooking them." Dioscorides alludes also to edible 

 fungi, for he writes : " Some people say that the bark 

 of the white and the black poplar, when cut into small 

 pieces and scattered over dunged spaces, will produce 

 edible fungi at all seasons." 



Pliny has a great deal to say about fungi, and 

 amongst his other observations he writes : " I will 

 now make some general observations on the cooking 

 of fungi, because this is the only food which dainty 

 voluptuaries themselves prepare with their own 

 hands, and thus, as it were, by anticipation feed on 

 them, using amber knives and silver service. Those 



^"Notices of Fungi in Greek and Latin Authors," by Rev. W. 

 Houghton, M.A., in Ann. Nat. Hist., Jan. 1885. 



