368 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
out stalks, Its form is very varied, being gene- 
rally oblong and irregularly round. The external 
rind is black and slightly wrinkled; while the 
interior is white and pithy, and is compared by 
the natives to the kernel of a tender cocoa-nut. 
It is tasteless and inodorous. By snake-charmers 
it is collected and sold as the favourite food with 
which they supply their dancing-serpents. Some 
of the villagers attribute to it poisonous properties. 
Strange to say, the natives of West Africa worship 
the magnificent Polyporus sacer ; while another of 
their fetiches is the Yatum condenado, or accursed 
devil, a species of Lycoperdon. 
Many of the fungi are possessed of highly poi- 
sonous properties, and serious, and even fatal, 
accidents occur occasionally in this country, and 
more frequently in France, from an incautious use 
of them. Sometimes this arises from confounding 
the edible with the poisonous species ; but even 
the edible kinds, owing to peculiar idiosyncrasy in 
some people, act always as poisons, and there is 
reason to believe that the best and safest mush- 
rooms, if taken in considerable quantity for any 
length of time, induce in many individuals a habit 
of body which may be pronounced a poisoned one. 
Pliny relates that Annzeus Serenus, the prefect of 
Nero’s guard, with his tribunes and centurions, 
accidentally met their death by eating some poi- 
