MELANCHOLY ETYMOLOGISTS. 37 



common articles of diet? We think it more patriotic 

 to try to solve that question than to help to keep up 

 the silly notion that the British peasantry would sink 

 in the social scale by so far resembling foreigners as to 

 feed upon funguses. 



We shall, therefore, with the help of the works already 

 referred to, give the outlines of Fungology, and make 

 special mention of those British fungi which are valu- 

 able as esculents. 



Fungology, as a scientific term, is objectionable, be- 

 cause combining a Latin with a Greek word. The 

 spurious term is, however, very generally received. 

 The fastidious classical purist may please himself by 

 substituting mycology, which is at once etymologically 

 correct and sufficiently comprehensive. The word fun- 

 gus may, however, in any case be retained in common 

 parlance, only, as Berkeley beseeches, we must not dis- 

 play our lack of learning by speaking of ' a fungi/ as in 

 Phillip's ' Prize Essay on the Potato Murrain,' for this 

 is " grating to the ear, and utterly intolerable. If fun- 

 gus be considered an English word, as it is by some of 

 our older authors, the plural will be funguses ; but there 

 is, then, something unpleasing in the sound, and the 

 term fungi is certainly to be preferred." 



Some melancholy etymologists, upon whom Badham 

 thinks good mushrooms really thrown away, derive fun- 

 gus from funus. The Dutch, on the other hand, from 

 supposing, no doubt, that the devil eats the best of 

 everything, compliment funguses with the title " Duv- 

 yel's broot." 



As to the origin of the term toad-stool, Badham asks, 

 " Have not the words tode, and the stool called after 

 him, some etymological, as they have undoubtedly a 

 fanciful, connection with the word todt (German), 

 death ?" Very likely, we think ; but then our learned 

 author does not perceive that his query favours the 

 theory of the melancholy etymologists who associate 

 fungi with funeral. "The origin of the word toad- 



