390 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
poisonous character, have made them less popular 
than they deserve, and increased the national dis- 
inclination to the use of any fungus save the com- 
mon mushroom. On the Continent, however, 
fungi afford not merely a flavouring for a delicate 
dish, or a pleasant sauce or pickle, but the staple 
food of thousands of the people; indeed, for 
several months in the year, especially in Poland 
and Russia, they constitute not only the staple, 
but the sole food of the peasantry, and from this 
circumstance they are called by enthusiastic 
writers ‘the manna of the poor’. To many who 
are not reduced by necessity to use them as food, 
they form a valuable source of income by collect- 
ing them for the market. Scarcely any of the 
four or five hundred species belonging to the 
genus Agaricus is rejected by the inhabitants of 
northern Europe, with the exception of the 
dung and fly Agarics, whose loathsome and 
poisonous properties are such as to deter the 
most devoted mycophagist from their use. Even 
species which are elsewhere universally avoided 
as poisonous, acrid, or disagreeable, are eaten in 
these countries with impunity and relish; their 
noxious properties, if not neutralized by soil and 
climate, being removed by a process of drying, or 
pickling in salt and vinegar. M. Roques, in his 
flistoire des Champignons, gives a very interest- 
