tated war and it is on record that Voltaire declared ‘a 
pot of mushrooms changed the history of Europe’. 
Most remarkable is the persistence in mycological 
writings of the assertion that T’sar Aleksei of Russia or 
his widow died from mushrooms. Sometimes the texts 
name him, but more often her. As to the Tsar himself, 
the circumstances of his death are well known and are 
unrelated to fungi. 
The source of these reports is to be found in a footnote 
that appears on page 111 of Jean-Jacques Paulet’s classic 
Traité des Champignons, published in Paris in 1798, read- 
ing as follows: 
L’accident arrivé 4 la veuve du czar Alexis, qui s’empoisonna 
avec des champignons qu’on avait gardés pour le caréme, et rap- 
porté par Miller, est de notre siécle. 
The accident that befell the widow of the Tsar Alexis, who was 
poisoned by mushrooms that had been set aside for Lent, as re- 
ported by Miller, belongs to our century. 
Paulet’s remark would arouse skepticism in any Russian. 
In winter (especially during Lent) the Great Russians 
eat an immense quantity of mushrooms, dried and mari- 
nated. The Tsarina would of course have enjoyed the 
pick of the harvest. Had she been the victim of deliber- 
ate poisoning, we should certainly not be indebted for 
our information about this event to a mycologist writing 
in France almost a century later. The Russian Court 
chronicles would have reported the episode and the at- 
tendant furore. If a mistake was made (which is almost 
incredible), everyone who shared in the dish would have 
succumbed. No one in Russia has ever heard of such a 
tragedy. 
Paulet refers to a book by ‘Miiller’, Vol. LI, p. 59. In 
vain did we look for it, until one day we came across an 
essay on this very citation by a Russian, B.P. Vasil’kov, 
the specialist in the higher fungi residing in Leningrad. 
[111] 
