i8'87-88.] Fungus Folk- Lore. l8r 



shire that fairies or witches make butter during the night, and 

 scatter it about on the ground. In Sweden there is a similar 

 belief ; and it is said that the witches milk the cows during the 

 night and make butter, or troll smor, as it is called. There is 

 also a belief in that country that if nine kinds of wood be 

 heaped into a pile, and some of the troll smor be thrown into 

 it, those who have been justly suspected as witches are in- 

 voluntarily compelled to admit it. 



Another species, the Jew's ear, as it is commonly but in- 

 correctly called, was an object of superstition in the middle 

 ages. It is evidently a corruption of Judas's ear. Eabelais 

 calls it Judas's ear, and says it is a form of fungus issuing from 

 old elder trees. There is a well-known tradition of the middle 

 ages that Judas hanged himself upon an elder tree, and that 

 the fungus sprouted out in consequence. 



" Judas lie japed 

 With jewen silver, 

 And sithen on an eller 

 Hanged liymselve," 



says Langland in his ' Piers Plowman.' Coles also mentions 

 the elder as " being supposed that whereon Judas hanged him- 

 self, and that ever since these mushrooms like unto ears have 

 grown thereon." Gerarde, however, says that the arhor Judce 

 is thought to be that upon which Judas hanged himself, and 

 not upon the elder, as it is vulgarly said. The tree called 

 Judas tree, known also in Frauce and Germany under that 

 name, is a corruption of Kuamos tree {Cercis siliquastrum), the 

 Leguminous or Bean tree of the East, and the corrupt name 

 has probably given rise to the tradition that it was upon that 

 tree that the arch-traitor hanged himself. The old herbalists 

 believed that the virtues possessed by this fungus were in- 

 exhaustible. For sore throats it was a never-failing cure. 

 An allied species in New Zealand is exported annually in 

 large quantities to China, where it is highly valued for its 

 supposed curative powers. It forms one of the principal 

 ingredients of their favourite soup, on account of its gelatinous 

 properties and its rich delicious flavour. 



Among the next division of Fungi, the most popular family 



