1916] FoMES OFFICINALIS (Vill.). 189 
The finest specimen I have seen came to me through the interest 
and courtesy of Mr. J. H. White—a specimen two feet long (vertical 
axis), and showing 45 annual layers. (Fig. 1). It was collected by 
Mr. D. R. Cameron, a graduate in Forestry from the University of 
Toronto, on Pinus monticola—a host not then recorded—at Revelstoke, 
B.C., 1911, in the Columbia Valley, growing suspended from the in- 
clined trunk of a living tree. Dr. C. D. Howe also made a collection 
in British Columbia on Douglas fir, in the summer of 1912. 
HISTORICAL. 
Fomes officinalis was the Agaricum of the ancients, an appellation 
for this fungus that still survives in the folk-lore of the province of 
Dauphiné in eastern France. Buller? reminds us that the origin of this 
name is made clear from the statement of Dioscorides in his Materia 
Medica, that it was imported into Greece and Italy from Agaria of 
Sarmatia, a district in the south of Russia, the home of the Agari, a 
people who were held to be skilled in medicine. Harz! recounts that 
for centuries Greece and Italy obtained their supplies of the ‘‘larch- 
fungus” from the city of Agaria and neighbourhood in Sarmatia. In 
more modern times Archangel in northern Russia has been the main 
collecting and distributing centre for this drug. 
The ancients, as recorded by Dioscorides, recognized two kinds?— 
“‘One kind is male, the other female, which differs from the male in 
having straight fibres within: the male is roundish in form and of 
the same texture throughout; in taste both kinds are similar, at first 
sweet, then, after being in the mouth a little time, bitter’’. Buller’, 
who has recently reviewed in a very interesting fashion the mycological 
lore of the classics, explains Dioscorides’ misconception regarding the 
sexuality of F. officinalis in this way. ‘‘Commercial Agaricum, according 
to Paulet, used to consist of fruit-bodies with the upper scaly crust and 
the lower layer of hymenial tubes removed. It seems likely, therefore, 
that the male Agaricum of Dioscorides was simply the fruit-body of 
Polyporus officinalis in the commercial state, and that the two forms of 
Agaricum were called male and female simply as a means of distinguishing 
them”’. But Pliny’s view of the sexual differences, it may be observed, 
was based on other grounds, in part on differences in taste—a difference, 
in accord with my own observations, that actually exists—for in his 
Natural History we find the following definition’: ‘‘The Agaricum 
grows like a fungus on trees around the Bosphorus; it is of a white 
colour. That which grows in Gaul is considered of an inferior kind. 
The male is thicker and more bitter than the female; the female, which 
