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JEW'S EARS PIE AND OTHER DAINTIES. 



W. NORWOOD CHEESMAN, 

 Selby; Member of the Yorkshire Mycological Committee. 



A few weeks ago I accepted a long-standing invitation to spend 

 the day with a farmer friend and taste Jew's Ears Pie for dinner. 

 The morning- was spent in viewing stock and crops, which made 

 us late for the dinner. Our appetites were right, and the pie 

 was right too. Certainly it contained other ingredients besides 

 the 'Hebraic external auricular cartilages,' juicy and tender beef- 

 steak being particularly noticeable. The ' boys ' had been in to 

 their dinner and the pie was half consumed. This inspired me 

 with confidence, and we paid the cook the compliment of leaving 

 the dish empty and pronouncing the repast a kingly one. During 

 an after-dinner pipe the farmer told me that he gathered the fungi 

 on a ' dry bank.' This aroused my curiosity and anxiety, as the 

 Jew's Ear fungus* (Himeola Auricula- J ndce) only grows on 

 Elder wood. I secured a small dried fragment of the repast and 

 it reminded me very much of a Peziza. On arriving home 

 I submitted it to a microscopic test and found the spores in asci 

 {Ascotnycetes), and further examination proved the specimen to 

 be Peziza repanda Wahlenb. So after all the disappointment 

 was compensated by the fact that another species was added to 

 the record list of my district, and a ' new to science ' one to the 

 list of known esculent fungi. 



Some years since there flourished an old Selby worthy who 

 spent his time between the workhouse in winter and gathering 

 Watercress, Buckbean, 'Sanctuary' (Erythrcea centau? -turn), and 

 Mushrooms in summer. He answered to the name ' Three 

 keels,' for his younger days had been spent as a freshwater 

 sailor, and at one time he was the owner of three keels, but his 

 thirst-quenching proclivities had induced him to swallow them. 



The man was bringing into town one day, in his basket, 

 some Champignons (Marasmius oreades) when a gentleman 

 accosted him with, ' My good man, you are surely not going to 

 sell those things to the people ? You will poison them ! ' He 

 replied (with a twinkle in his eye as he told me), ' Noa, aam 

 goin' to eeat 'em mesen ; aam not quite reat e' me eead.' 

 And certainly the effect on the man's appearance of swallowing 

 ' three keels ' did not belie the latter part of his statement. 



* Found plentifully on Elder bushes in Leys Wood, North Grimston. 

 Y.N.U. Exc., 1 2th June 1902. 

 1902 September 1. 



