Chap. 13.] 
AGARIC. 
353 
CHAP. 12. THE KEEMES BEEliY. 
The holm oak, however, by its scarlet berry®^ alone chal- 
lenges competition with all these manifold productions. This 
grain appears at first sight to be a roughness on the surface of 
the tree, as it were, a small kind of the aquifolia^^ variety 
of holm oak, known as the cusculium.^^ To the poor in Spain 
it furnishes^ the means of paying one half of their tribute. 
We have already, when speaking^^ of the purple of the murex, 
mentioned the best methods adopted for using it. It is pro- 
duced also in Galatia, Africa, Pisidia, and Cilicia : the most 
inferior kind is that of Sardinia. 
CHAP. 13. AGARIC. 
It is in the Gallic provinces more particularly that the glan- 
diferous trees produce agaric such being the name given to 
a white fungus which has a strong odour, and is very useful as 
an antidote. It grows upon the top of the tree, and gives 
out a brilliant light^^ at night : this, indeed, is the sign by 
which its presence is known, and by the aid of this light it 
may be gathered during the night. The segilops is the only 
one among the glandiferous trees that bears a kind of dry 
cloth, covered with a white mossy shag, and this, not only 
attached to the bark, but hanging down from the branches as 
well, a cubit even in length : this substance has a strong 
in the modern sense, but the sub-carbonate of potash ; while the ashes of 
trees growing on the shores of the sea produce a sub-carbonate of soda. 
^3 Coccus." This is not a gall, but the distended body of an insect, the 
kerraes, which grows on a peculiar oak, the " Quercus coccifera," found in 
the soutli of Europe. 
®* We have previously mentioned, that he seems to have confounded the 
holly with the holm oak. 
Poinsinet, rather absurdly, as it would appeal*, finds in this word the 
origin of our word "cochineal." 
The kermes berry is but little used in Spain, or, indeed, anywhere else, 
since the discovery of the cochineal of America. 
B. ix. c. 65. 
Not the white agaric, Fee says, of modern pharmacy ; but, as no kind 
of agaric is found in the oak, it does not seem possible to identify it. See 
B. XXV. c. 57. 
It is evident that no fungus would give out phosphoric light ; but it 
may have resulted from old wood in a state of decomposition. 
^'^ It is pretty clear that one of the lichens of the genus, usnea is here 
referred to, Amadue, or German tinder, seems somewhat similar. 
VOL. III. A A 
