i8o Fungus Folk-Lore. [Sess. 



popular name of the Hen-of-the-woods or Breeding-lien, from 

 a fancied resemblance to the female of the grey groiise sitting 

 on eggs. In Italy, rackrented tenants send specimens of this 

 fungus as surprise presents, by way of inducing the landlords 

 to reduce the rent. 



Among the group which gets its name from the tremulous 

 gelatinous appearance of several species, there is some curious 

 folk-lore. It is their strange appearance which has given rise 

 to the many curious traditions about them. They are known 

 as Star -jellies or Fallen-stars, from a superstitious belief that 

 they were the remains of fallen stars. In Sweden they are 

 called Sky-falls. Dr J. Eussell Lowell, commenting on one 

 of Lovelace's poetic images, says it is based on the belief 

 that stars shooting from their places fell to the earth and 

 turned to jellies. Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary explains 

 Shot-star as the meteoric substance often seen to shoot through 

 the atmosphere, or appearing in a gelatinous form on the 

 ground. The ' Statistical Account of Scotland ' also explains 

 the substance called Shot-stars as " nothing else than frosted 

 potatoes. A night of hard frost in the end of autumn, in 

 which those meteors called falling-stars are seen, reduces the 

 potato to the consistence of a jelly or soft pulp, having no 

 resemblance to a potato except when parts of the skin of the 

 potato adhere below undissolved. This pulp remains soft and 

 fluid when all things else in nature are consolidated by frost, 

 for which reason it is greedily taken up by crows and other 

 fowls when no other sustenance is to be had, so that it is often 

 found by man in the actual circumstance of having fallen from 

 above, having its parts scattered and dispersed by the fall, 

 according to the law of falling bodies. This has given rise to 

 the name and vulgar opinion concerning it." A great many 

 other curious sayings exist about fallen- or shot-stars, but they 

 have reference more particularly to an alga which was at one 

 time classed among the fungi. The term Witches' butter or 

 Fairy butter is often generally applied to the yellow gelatinous 

 species, but most country folks, when they refer to Witches' 

 butter, mean a blackish fungus which feels on the under side 

 like black crape. In Atkinson's ' Glossary of the Cleveland 

 Dialect,' it is stated that the belief is quite common in York- 



