170 CRYPTOGAMIA-FUNGI. 



that the flies which sip of the dirty yellow liquor into 

 which this fungus dissolves, die almost immediately. 

 HALLER relates that six persons of Lithuania in Poland 

 perished at one time by eating it. The Ostiacks in Siberia, 

 and the Kamtschatdales and Koriacks, however, use it for 

 the purpose of producing intoxication. They " sometimes 

 eat it dry, sometimes immersed in a fermented liquor 

 made with the Epilobium, which they drink notwithstand- 

 ing the dreadful effects. They are at first seized with 

 convulsions in all their limbs, then with a raving such as 

 attends a burning fever; a thousand phantoms, gay or 

 gloomy according to their constitutions, present themselves 

 to their imaginations ; some dance, others are seized with 

 unspeakable horrors. They personify this mushroom, and 

 if its effects urge them to suicide, or any dreadful crime, 

 they say they obey its commands. To fit themselves for 

 premeditated assassinations, they take the Moucho-more, the 

 Russian name of this agaric. Such is the fascination of 

 drunkenness in this country, that nothing can induce the 

 natives to forbear this dreadful potion." PEXNANT. For 

 some further particulars relative to its operation, the cu- 

 rious reader is referred to the Wernerian Memoirs, vol. iv. 

 344. It has been used in medicine, but its properties, and 

 the principle on which they depend, seem very imperfectlv 

 known. See CHRIST ISON on Poisons, p. 655. 



1C. A. latus, gills pale flesh colour or white, 8 in a set, but ir- 

 regular ; pileus brown-mouse, convex, rather bossed ; stem white, 

 cylindrical WITH. iv. 267- BOLT- Fung, t 2, the description 

 good and the figure very bad. Sow. Fung. t. 108. 



Hob. In woods amongst long grass, and in old pastures, 

 not common. 



Stalk bulbous, cylindrical, white or greyish, fibrous, solid, 3 

 inches high, thickish. Pileus from 3 to 6 inches across, 

 plane, becoming a little concave, smooth, mouse-coloured ; 

 flesh white, juiceless. Gills dull white or light brown, 

 numerous, 8 in a set. " When young the gills are mostly 



' white, changing to pink in a few hours after gathering, or 

 as it advances in age, till it sheds a snuff-coloured powder, 

 the gills then being brownish." SOWERBY. There is an 

 apparent hairiness in tho pileus of SOWEREY'S figure, of 

 which there was nothing visible in our specimens. 



17. A. terreusy clustered, hard and dry ; stem thickish, white, 

 generally compressed ; pileus plano-convex, with an involute 





