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266 DICTIOXARY OF POPULAR NAMES BIANNA 



^gree witli Moses' description of'tlie Manna; with regard to 

 ^vliiQl>*,'#&ie writers .'liave endeavoured to explain that the 

 niiraciilous fall of the IManna of the Israelites was due to natural 

 causes, and believe it to have been showers of a Cryptogamic 

 23lant {Liclien escuhntus), called by modern botanists Lecanora 

 esculenta, first brought into notice by Pallas, a liussian traveller, 

 in 1788, who observed it in the Crimea, and also on very dry 

 limestone hills in the desert of Tartary, lying on the ground like 

 small stones united together. The use made of it by the in- 

 habitants for food in times of scarcity led him to name it Ziehen 

 esculentus, and he described and figured it in a Eussian botanical 

 work in 1796. The species now in question, and a closely-allied 

 species {Leeanora ciffinis), occupy vast tracts of barren plains 

 and mountains in many regions of Western Asia, and also of 

 Xorth Africa ; in time it loses its attachment to the surface on 

 ^\-hich it grows, and being light is carried up by the winds and 

 conveyed in the air to a great distance, ultimately falling to the 

 ground, and sometimes forming a layer several inches in thick- 

 ness. Sheep eat it, and in times of scarcity the inhabitants 

 make a kind of bread of it, regarding it as sent to them by 

 Providence, and believing that it falls from heaven. Specimens 

 collected after a shower are to be seen in the ]\Iuseum at 

 Kew, sent by W. K. Loftus, Esq., in 1854; also specimens from 

 Bayaza, in Asiatic Turkey, sent in 1855 by H. H. Calvert, Esq., 

 British Consul at Erzeroum. On the 3d of AugTist 1828 a 

 shower is recorded to have fallen in the regjion of ]\Iount Ararat 

 in Armenia. The same, or a closely-allied species of lichen, has 

 been observed by the Ptev. H. B. Tristram in the great desert of 

 Sahara, lying on the ground like nodules of sand ; it is gathered 

 by the natives, and used by them as food in times of scarcity. 



The late Giles Munby, Esq., who resided for a number of 

 years ui Algeria, also gives an account of it in a paper read before 

 the British Association at Birmincrham in 1849. He savs that 

 L. esculenta, or an allied species, springs up in a night, covering 

 the sand of the desert ; and that the Erench soldiers during an 

 expedition south of Constantine subsisted on it for some davs, 



