ESCULENT FUNGI OF GREAT BRITAIN. 351 
It appears that the fungus was afterwards held in less 
celebrity, from having been the innocent vehicle of poison ; 
an unfortunate kind of logic which Pliny amusingly 
adopts, and whom I shall quote ; preferring, however, to 
give Holland's translation, rather than the original. 
" Among all those things which are eaten with danger, 
I take that mushromes may be justly ranged in the first 
and principal place : true it is, that they have a most plea- 
sant and delicate tast ; but discredited much they are, and 
brought into an ill name, by occasion of the poyson which 
Agrippina the Empresse conveighed unto her husband 
Tiberius Claudius the Emperour, by their means : a 
dangerous president given for the like practice afterwards.*" 
Pliny adds, that before the pileus has burst from the 
volva, the volva is as " good meat as the mushrome itselfe.^' 
He also observes, that " none are able to discern hurtful 
mushromes from others, how curious and circumspect so- 
ever they be, save only the peasants of the country where 
they grow.'' And another source of danger lies, according 
to the same author, in fungi being very fit objects to retain 
the poison conveyed by the breath of serpents. 
In later times, J. casarea has recovered its reputation ; 
and, next to Agaricus campestris^ it is the one most em- 
ployed. In this country, it probably is comparatively rare; 
and my only authority for its being really indigenous, is 
Mr Gray (who, by the way, gives no stations for his new 
British plants, and no authority, except his own). In this 
country, therefore, it has no popular name. In France, it 
is called Vorange, dorade, jaune d'oBitfi cadran; in the 
Pays des Voges, jazeran orjasserans ; in Italy, coccoli or 
uovali; and in Piedmont, bole real.^.Vid. Pers, Traite, 
p. m. 
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