266 DICTIONARY OF POPULAR NAMES MANNA 



agree -with Moses' description of the Manna; with regard to 

 •which some writers have endeavoured to explain that the 

 miracnlous fall of the Manna of the Israelites was due to natural 

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

 plant {Lichen esmUntus), called by modern botanists Lecanora 

 escuUnta, first brought into notice by Pallas, a Eussian 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 Lichen 

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

 w^ork in 1796. The species now in question, and a closely-allied 

 species {Lecanora affinis), occupy vast tracts of barren plains 

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

 North Africa; in time it loses its attachment to the suiface on 

 wdiich it grows, and being light is carried up by the winds and 

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

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

 ness. Sheep eat it, and in tmies 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 Museum at 

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

 Bayaza, in Asiatic Turkey, sent in 1855 by H. PI. Calveit, Esq., 

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

 shower is recorded to have fallen in the region of Mount Ararat 

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

 been observed by the Eev. 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 scaicity. 



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

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

 the British Association at Birmingham in 1849. He says that 

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

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

 expedition south of Constantine subsisted on it for some davs, 



