26 Rev. W. Houghton's Notices of Fungi 



the Woolhope Field-club meeting at Hereford last October, 

 Mr. A. S. Bicknell remarked : — " Perhaps the most startling- 

 statement to be found in Badham's book is the passage where 

 he says that almost the only fungus condemned as poisonous 

 in Rome is our common mushroom ; the words of Sanguinetti, 

 his authority, are ' The sale is absolutely prohibited of the 

 so-called Prateroli.' Evidently the question turns upon 

 whether pratiolo means A. campestrts. In Bologna, long a 

 pontifical town, I saw mushrooms selling in the market for 

 40 c. the kil. (less than twopence per pound) ; but they are 

 not abundant in Italy, for there are few meadows." 



Celsus, who lived about the time of Augustus and Tibe- 

 rius, briefly alludes to unwholesome fungi ( a fungi inu- 

 tiles ") : — " If any one shall have eaten noxious fungi let him 

 eat radishes with vinegar and water (" posca"), or with salt 

 and vinegar ; these may be distinguished from the wholesome 

 kinds by their appearance, and can be rendered serviceable by 

 a mode of cooking them ; for if they have been boiled in oil 

 or with the young twig of a pear-tree they become free from 

 any bad quality " (De Med. v. 27. 17). 



Dioscorides is somewhat more diffuse on fungi than all 

 other ancient writers except Pliny. He mentions a practice 

 in his time for causing edible fungi to grow : — u Some people 

 say that the bark of the white and the black poplar when cut 

 into small pieces and scattered over dunged spaces will pro- 

 duce edible fungi (fxvfcrjTas e&aySlfjLovs) at all seasons " (Mat. 

 Med. i. 109). Dioscorides appears to be the first writer who 

 mentions the Agaricum, a word familiar to all mycologists 

 under the name of agaric, though the original name stood for 

 something quite different from the laminated agarics of 

 modern systematists. Of the agaricum he writes : — 



" Agaricum root is said to resemble the root of silphium 

 (Assafcetida) ; it is not, however, thick in appearance, like 

 silphium, but altogether slighter. One kind is male, the other 

 female, which differs from the male in having straight fibres 

 within (/cT^Sova? evdeia? evros) ; the male is round and homo- 

 geneous in structure throughout; in taste both kinds are 

 similar, at first sweet, then, after being swallowed, bitter. It 

 grows in Agaria of Sarmatia ; some people say that 

 it is the root of a plant, others that it is produced in 

 the trunks of trees that have become rotten like fungi 

 (/AVfcnTes) ; it grows also in Asia, viz. in Galatia and Cilicia, 

 on cedar trees, but of a friable and weak nature. Its pro- 

 perties are styptic and heat-producing, efficacious against 

 colic ((TTpocfrovs) and sores, fractured limbs, and bruises from 

 falls ; the dose is two obols weight with wine and honey to 



