LICHENS, 69 



" From all accounts the quantities collected have 

 been very great. Dr. Heinig says that a person 

 could collect at the rate of a pound and a half in 

 an hour, which, considering the lightness of the 

 product, is a tolerable quantity. The substance is 

 ground up with wheat, and made into bread, or eaten 

 simply in its raw and natural state," 



Commenting subsequently on the above narrative 

 in the journal in which it appeared, the Rev. M. J, 

 Berkeley^ referred to previous occurrences of like 

 phenomena, some of which are alluded to above. 

 He says that Treviranus, in 181 5, figured specimens 

 obtained by Blume from somewhere to the east of 

 the Caspian Sea. Parrot brought some which were 

 collected in the beginning of 1828, and said to have 

 descended from the skies in some districts of Persia 

 and to have covered the ground to the depth of five 

 or six inches. Gobel analyzed some of these, and 

 believed them to have been carried by electric winds 

 from distant localities. Ledebour met with the pro- 

 duction frequently in the Kirghiz steppes and in 

 Central Asia, and had seen them spring with great 

 rapidity after repeated heavy rains, and believed that 

 they must have been produced under similar circum- 

 stances in Persia, and it is observable that in all the 

 accounts the supposed descent is uniformly during 

 rainy weather, 



Eversmann, who had an opportunity of studying the 

 species on the rivers Emba and Jaik, and also near 

 Lake Aral, was convinced that, even in the earliest 

 stage of growth, there is not the slightest attachment 



1 Gardener's Chronicle, Sept. 29, 1849, p. 612. 



