262 FOOTNOTES FROM 



whole of Europe, as well as in Japan, India, Africa, and 

 New Zealand. " In some parts of France, as in Poitou," 

 says Berkeley, "it is simply necessary, in order to their 

 supply, to enclose a spot on the calcareous downs, sowing 

 it with acorns. As soon as the saplings attain a growth of 

 a few years, the truffles appear, and a harvest is obtained 

 for many years successively without further trouble." 



Such is a brief description of almost all the edible 

 fungi known or used in this country ; and the fatal mis- 

 takes which have been sometimes made, by confounding 

 some of them with nearly allied species of a highly 

 poisonous character, have made them less popular than 

 they deserve, and increased the national disinclination 

 to the use of any fungus save the common mushroom. 

 On the Continent, however, fungi afford not merely a 

 flavouring for a delicate dish, or a pleasant sauce or 

 pickle, but the staple food of thousands of the people : 

 indeed, for several months in the year, especially in 

 Poland and Eussia, they constitute not only the staple, 

 but the sole food of the peasantry, and from this cir- 

 cumstance they are called by enthusiastic writers " the 

 manna of the poor." To many who are not reduced 

 by necessity to use them as food, they form a valuable 

 source of income by collecting them for the market. 

 Scarcely any of the four or five hundred species belong- 

 ing to the genus Agaricus is rejected by the inhabitants of 

 northern Europe, with the exception of the dung and fly 

 Agaric, whose loathsome and poisonous properties are 

 such as to deter the most devoted mycophagist from 

 their use. Even species which are elsewhere universally 

 avoided as poisonous, acrid, or disagreeable, are eaten in 



