THE MANNA OF THE DESERT. 173 



the Arabs onaran-el-ard. Their usual size is from three feet to 

 three feet four inches. The varan of the Nile wears an armour of 

 alternately green and black scales. Its congener exhibits a mixture 

 of brown and yellow, more suitable to its sandy lairs. It is rare in 

 the Sahara, but common enough in the deserts of Egypt, Syria, and 

 Nubia. 



Poor as may be the Fauna of the Desert, there is yet cause 

 enough for astonishment that the species which compose it, especially 

 the herbivora, should be able to find subsistence in these seas of 

 sand, where they can find but a few saline plants scattered at rare 

 intervals, and where fresh water is almost wholly wanting. It is, 

 however, well known now-a-days that the wilderness provides its 

 denizens with an aliment, which is sometimes very abundant, suitable 

 for man, the camel, and the beasts, and is considered identical by 

 many authorities with the manna of the Bible.* This substance is 

 a cryptogamous vegetable, variously christened lichen esculentus 

 (Acharius), lecanora esculenta (Pallas), luttarut (by the Arabs), and 

 vasseh-el-ard, or " earth-dung" (by the Algerines). It sometimes 

 forms on the sand, in the morning, a layer one or two inches in 

 thickness, and appears to have dropped from heaven, or to have 

 sprung spontaneously from the soil, during the night. It is probable 

 that its spores, transported by the wind, are developed by the humi- 

 dity which is condensed through the nocturnal coldness. 



A shower of this lichen was observed, in April 1846, in the 

 Russian government of Wilna. It covered the soil for three or four 

 inches in depth, and the inhabitants lived upon it for several days. 

 Its form is that of a small, anfractuous, rounded grain, about the 

 size of a pea, externally of a gray colour, but white and farinaceous 

 within. Its taste is weak, amygdalaceous, with a faint, mushroom- 

 like aroma. Boiled in water, it swells, becomes gelatinous, and may 

 be served up in various ways. In the Sahara, as well as in Arabia, 



* This substance, according to other authorities, was more probably the saccharine 

 exudation, Mount Sinai manna, which forms on the branches of the tamarix mannifera, 

 and thence falls to the ground. 



