66 ROMANCE OF LOW LIFE AMONGST PLANTS. 



making bread of it, which was found to be good and 

 nourishing. The country people affirm that they 

 had never seen this lichen before nor after that time. 

 During the siege of Herat (which is about 876 feet 

 above the sea), more recently the papers men- 

 tioned a hail of manna which fell upon the city, 

 and served as food to the inhabitants. A rain of 

 manna occurred April, 1846, in the district of Jeni- 

 schehir — the government of Wilna — on the grounds 

 of M. Tizenhaux, and formed a layer three or four 

 inches in thickness. It was of a greyish white colour, 

 rather hard, and irregular in form, inodorous and 

 insipid. 



" Pallas observed it in the mountainous, arid, and 

 calcareous portions of the great desert of Tartary. 

 M. Eversham collected it in the steppe of the Kirghiz 

 to the north of the Caspian Sea, where it is called 

 semljenoiclileb. M. Ledebour has observed it in the 

 same countries, but chiefly those which border on 

 Altai ; and Bilezikdgi saw it also in Anatolia, in 

 1845. Dr. Leveille gathered it in the Crimea, and 

 Dr. Guyon recently in Algeria." •■• 



A more recent and detailed account was forwarded 

 from Erzeroum, in 1849,^ which supplies some very 

 interesting particulars. It states that "two months 

 previously a report was current in Erzeroum that a 

 miraculous fall of an edible substance had occurred 

 near Byazid, but as the simplest facts are often 

 greatly distorted and exaggerated in this country, 



1 " Notices of Koordi:,tan," by A. H. Wright, in Silliman' s Journal, 

 2nd series, vol. iii.. May, 1847. 

 " Gardener's Chronicle, Sept. 15, 1849, p. 581. 



