Mr. F. P. Pascoe on new Asiatic Longicornia. 49 



One more Latin name, viz. Helvella, requires a short 

 notice. Helvella or Helvela, which the grammarian Festus 

 etymologically explains as " olera minuta," i. e. small 

 garden herbs (helus = olus), is used by Cicero (Ep. ad Fam. 

 vii. 26) apparently to denote some kind of fungus. From 

 Cicero's letter to G alius it would seem that the fashion of 

 eating fungi, which, as we have seen, is considered by Pliny 

 to have been one of rather recent date, originated from a desire 

 to substitute some dainty kind of food for that which the " Lex 

 sumptuaria " (the act which regulated the expenses of the 

 table) forbade in the case of certain expensive articles of 

 animal diet. Products of the soil were not included in the 

 act ; hence, as Cicero tells us, the dainty feeders of his day 

 devised all modes of cooking vegetable food in order to make 

 it tasty ; and the great orator accounts for an illness which 

 troubled him by a too free use of such rich diet. The " Lex 

 sumptuaria," simple enough apparently, was, after all, a fraud 

 in his case ; he had abstained from oysters and murenas, but 

 not from highly-seasoned vegetables. " Nam dum volunt 

 illi lauti terra nata, qua? lege excepta sunt, in honorem addu- 

 cere, fungos, helvellas, herbas omnes, ita condiunt, ut nihil 

 possit esse suavius." " "While those elegant eaters wish to 

 bring into high repute the products of the soil which are not 

 included in the act, they prepare their fungi, helvella3, and 

 all vegetables with such highly seasoned condiments, that it 

 is impossible to conceive anything more delicious." It is not 

 improbable therefore that the extensive use of fungi as a 

 favourite article of food among the rich Romans is to be 

 attributed to some extent to the " Lex sumptuaria," which is 

 ascribed by Aulus Gellius to M. Licinius Crassus in the year 

 of Pome 643, and that in the time of the emperors the fashion 

 became still more common. 



The use of the word helvella, proposed by Linnaeus and 

 retained by modern mycologists, to denote the genus which it 

 represents, is as arbitrary and irrelevant as the other words 

 which he has transferred from classical writers. 



VI. — Descriptions of some new Asiatic Longicornia. 

 By Feancis P. Pascoe, F.L.S. 



Mr. H. Pryer having recently sent a small collection of 

 insects from Ellopura, in North Borneo, containing a few 

 undescribed Longicorn beetles, I have taken the opportunity 

 in publishing them of adding a few unnamed eastern species 

 Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 5. Vol. xv. 4 



