Am.  Jour.  Pharm.) 
March,  1920.) 
The  Manna  of  Scripture. 
175 
ing  to  his  eatings;"  and  added,  "Let  no  man  leave  of  it  till  the  morn- 
ing." But  some  of  them  left  it  till  the  morning,  and  it  bred  worms 
and  stank.  When  the  sun  waxed  hot  it  melted.  .  .  .  "And  the 
house  of  Israel  called  the  name  thereof  'Manna:'  and  it  was  like 
coriander  seed,  white;  and  the  taste  of  it  was  like  wafers  made  with 
honey." 
The  description  given  of  it  in  Numbers  xi,  7-9,  is  slightly  different : 
"The  manna  was  like  coriander  seed  and  the  eye  thereof  as  the 
appearance  of  bdellium.  The  people  went  about  and  gathered  it 
and  ground  it  in  mills  or  beat  it  in  mortars  and  seethed  it  in  pots 
and  made  cakes  of  it,  and  the  taste  thereof  was  as  the  taste  of  fresh 
oil.  And  when  the  dew  fell  upon  the  camp  in  the  night  the  manna 
fell  upon  it." 
It  is  obvious  to  any  cryptogamic  botanist  that  these  characters 
belong  to  fungi  rather  than  to  lichens.  Everyone  familiar  with 
British  fungi  knows  how  rapidly,  even  in  our  own  temperate  cli- 
mate, many  of  the  softer  agarics  become  full  of  the  grubs  or  larvae, 
of  small  flies  or  beetles,  and  how  rapidly  fungi  grow  when  the  con- 
ditions of  warmth  and  moisture  are  suitable  for  their  development. 
Melting  in  the  sun  (or  as  soon  as  the  spores  are  mature)  is  a  familiar 
phenomenon  in  our  country  in  the  case,  for  instance,  of  Coprintis 
atramentarius,  which  derives  its  specific  name  from  the  fact  that 
the  plant  deliquesces  into  a  black,  inky  fluid.  The  same  genus  also 
provides  the  edible  species,  Coprimis  comatus.  To  mycologists, 
also,  the  gregarious  character  of  many  fungi  is  well  known.  I 
remember,  some  years  ago,  noticing  on  Saunton  Sands,  in  North 
Devon,  that  apparently  the  ground  was  scattered  all  over  in  one 
place  with  what  looked  like  bleached  rabbit's  dung,  each  nodule  of 
which  had  a  dark  point  in  its  centre,  on  stooping  to  take  up  one 
nodule  to  ascertain  the  cause  of  this  appearance,  it  came  up  in  my 
hand  with  a  stalk  of  about  six  times  its  length,  which  had  been 
immersed  in  the  sand,  and  it  proved  to  be  the  rare  fungus  Tulostoma 
mammositm.  This  may  have  some  bearing  on  the  statement  that 
the  eye  or  "appearance  of  manna  was  as  the  appearance  of  bdel- 
lium" (Numbers  xi,  7),  which  may  have  indicated  that  the  manna 
grains  had  a  dark  central  vSpot. 
The  other  substances  which  have  been  suggested  as  being  the 
manna  of  Scripture  are  described  in  "Pharmacographia"  (2nd  ed.), 
pp.  414-416,  and  in  Smith's  "Dictionary  of  the  Bible,"  1865,  p. 
512;  but  these  cannot  possibly  be  regarded  as  answering  to  the 
