22 Kev. W. Houghton's Notices of Fungi 



through the very variable species Spongilla lacustris and 8. 

 fragilis, in Meyenia fluviatilis, in Heteromeyenia argyro- 

 sperma&n&H. Ryder i, and, lastly and most conspicuously, in 

 Tubella pennsylvxnica. The extremes in this last series differ 

 so widely that they would hardly be taken to belong to the 

 same species ; but the intermediate grades have all been col- 

 lected largely from the same stream, and as a result several 

 species named in this and other cases have relapsed into 

 synonyms. 



V. — Notices of Fungi in Greek and Latin Authors. By the 

 Rev. William Houghton, M.A., F.L.S. 



It may perhaps interest some of the readers of ' The Annals 

 and Magazine of Natural History ' if I bring before them in 

 a collected form all that I have been able to gather on the 

 subject of fungi from the writings of the ancient Greeks and 

 Romans. I am not aware whether anything of this kind has 

 been hitherto attempted by any English writer ; but in Ger- 

 many Dr. H. O. Lenz, in his useful ' Botanik der alteri 

 Griechen und Romer ' (Gotha, 1859), has collected together 

 the scattered notices of fungi which appear in classical authors, 

 and has added footnotes containing his own observations. 

 The late Dr. Badham, in his ' Treatise on the Esculent 

 Funguses of England ' (London, 1863), gives a short account 

 of their classical history • but no systematic collection has, so 

 far as I know, been hitherto made. Although, perhaps, the 

 subject is not one of very great importance, still it is one to 

 which a certain degree of interest attaches itself both for the 

 general reader and for the mycologist. 



The earliest Greek writer who takes any notice of fungi is 

 Theophrastus (circ. B.C. 300) ; there is no allusion to these 

 plants in the works of Homer and Hesiod. The word fjuvK-n^ 

 indeed occurs in Herodotus (iii. 64), but it there means the 

 cap of the sheath of a sword, from its conical or fungus-like 

 form. Theophrastus (Hist. Plant, i. 1, § 11) speaks of the 

 fiv/cns and the vhvov as having neither root, stem (icavkos) 

 branch, bud, leaf, flower, nor fruit, neither again bark, pith, 

 fibies, nor veins; but in i. 5, §3, he speaks of the stem 

 (KavXo'i) of the fjLi>KT]<i as being of uniform structure or even- 

 ness, without knots, prickles, or divisions. In i. 6, § 5, the 

 vhvov, /j.v/cn<i, irefys, and yepdvetov (/cepavviov) are mentioned 

 as having no root. The fivicrjTes in iii. 7, § 6, are said to 



