By the word ????, ?t?? or ??, ?, whereof the usually received root, ???? (mucus), is probably factitious, the Greeks used familiarly to designate certain, but indefinite species of funguses, which they were in the habit of employing at table. This term, in its origin at once trivial and restricted to at most a few varieties, has become in our days classical and generic; Mycology, its direct derivative, including, in the language of modern botany, several great sections of plants (many amongst the number of microscopic minuteness), which have apparently as little to do with the original import of ???? as smut, bunt, mould, or dry-rot, have to do with our table mushrooms. A like indefiniteness formerly characterized the Latin word fungus, though it be now used in as catholic a sense as that of ????; this, in the classic times of Rome, seems to have been confined (without any precise limitation, however) to certain sorts which might be eaten, and to others which it was not safe to eat. The

which occurs in Ovid’s ‘Fasti,’ alludes to the former; the

of Martial, points to an inferior kind, but still esculent; whilst the word not unfrequently designated, if not actual toadstools, at least very equivocal mushrooms; of which character were those “ancipites fungi” presented by Veiento to his poor clients. Some melancholy etymologists, upon whom good mushrooms are really thrown away, would beget fungus out of funus, but Voss[6] judiciously rejects so harsh and forced a derivation, mentioning together with it others that are still more so.

The word Boletus, which now stands for a large genus of the section Pileati, was used in ancient Rome to designate that particular mushroom which had the honour, under Agrippina’s orders and Locusta’s cookery, of poisoning Claudius; in memory of which event it is now called Amanita CÆsarea, the CÆsar’s mushroom. It occurs frequently both in the poets and prose writers of those days, and was in high esteem, as we collect from Pliny, who, though no mushroom-fancier himself, calls this “Boletus optimi cibi.” Nero, in playful allusion to his uncle’s death, of which it was the occasion, designates it the ‘food of gods,’ ??a ?e??; and Martial celebrates it in many a convivial epigram; in one, for instance, where he asks his hard-hearted patron, “what possible pleasure it can be for his guests to sit at his table, and see him devour boletuses;” in another, “gold and silver and dresses may be trusted to a messenger, but not a boletus, (subaudi) because he will eat it on the way.” This is the only ancient mushroom which we at once recognize by the description of it; “it originates,” says Pliny, “in a volva, or purse, in which it lies at first concealed as in an egg; breaking through this, it rises upwards on its stalk; the colour of its cap is red; it takes a week to pass through the various stages of its growth and declension.” The suillus—probably the same as the modern porcino (a word of analogous import), which was, and is, eaten by men as well as pigs, and not always by these[7]—was, according to Pliny, the fungus which most readily lent itself to poisoning by mistake; a remark so far consonant to modern experience, that it is liable, without some attention, to be confounded with the Boletus luridus, B. cyanescens, and others, which in their general shape and external hue resemble it, though it is not by any means certain that any of these species, with which it may be confounded, are themselves poisonous.[8] The word tuber, though it occasionally (as in Juvenal) meant the truffle, seems to have been used with considerable latitude. Thus the tubers said to spring up after those optatos imbres, those “long-wished-for showers of spring,” were, probably, not truffles, but puff-balls, which, at the season of warm rains grow with incredible rapidity, forming an esteemed article of luxury, not only in Italy, but also in India; whereas the truffle never makes its appearance in the markets at such times, nor comes up so immediately after rain. Tuber, like our ancient “fusseball,” seems a common appellation both for truffles and puff-balls. What the ancients understood by hydnum is as little precise or discriminate as the last word; for Theophrastus declares it to have a light bark, ?e??f????? e??a?, in which case it is a puff-ball, while the plant called ?d??f????, which is said to indicate the whereabouts of hydna in its neighbourhood, can only refer to the truffle. The truffle, however, which is now so much prized throughout Europe, seems not to have been known to the ancients, at least it is not described by them.[9] That which the Greeks called misy, and the Romans the Libyan truffle,[10] was white and of very delicious flavour, whilst by hydnum (when this word really meant truffle) they usually designated a particular kind bearing a smooth red rind, and abounding in certain districts of Italy; but having no chance against the black, nodulated tuber tuberum, the truffle par excellence, found in such abundance in the vicinities of Rome, Florence, Siena, etc., and, above all, amongst the Nursian hills of Umbria, over against Spoleto, whence it is largely exported throughout and beyond Italy. Under the name Peziza, the ancients appear at times to describe, unconsciously, a Scleroderma or species of puff-ball after it has evacuated its seed, when it presents a flattened surface, and so far looks like a Peziza, with which, in fact, it has no connection. By Amanita, Galen intended some kind of esculent fungus, but we know not which; this word has now come to have a more extensive import, and to designate, besides one or two species that are good, many of the most dangerous character. Whatever the ancient Amanita may have been, it was formerly in high repute; Galen declares that, next to the Boletus, it is ??a?stat?? to eat—in which good report of it he is abundantly borne out by the concurrent testimony of Nicander. What Dioscorides meant by ??a????? is another uncertainty, to resolve which we have not sufficient data; one thing seems plain, that it could not have been our officinal Agaric, for that grows upon the Larch, whereas his Agaricon grew upon the Cedar. Julius Scaliger amuses himself at the expense of AthenÆus for saying that Agaricus is so called from the country of Agaria, whence he would make out that it originally came; whereas there never was such a country, his Agaria being, like our Poiatia, only another synonym for Fancy’s fairyland.[11]

The words champignon and mushroom have both a French origin, though, like the corresponding derivatives from the Greek and Latin, they too have come to signify things different from what they originally designated; champignon, for example, of which champ would seem to be the root, is generic in France. The ‘TraitÉs sur les Champignons’ of Bulliard, Persoon, Paulet, Cordier, and Roques, are treatises of funguses in genere; whilst in England we restrict the word champignon to one small Agaric, which, as it grows in the so-called “fairy-rings,” is hence named Ag. oreades. Again, there can be no doubt that our word mushroom (which, as contradistinguished from toadstool, is so far generic) comes from the French mouceron (originally spelt mousseron), and belongs of right to that most dainty of funguses, the A. prunulus, which grows amidst tender herbage and moss (whence its name), and which is justly considered, over almost the whole continent of Europe, as the ne plus ultra of culinary friandise. It abounds in various parts of England, being everywhere trodden underfoot, or reaped down, or dug up as a nuisance, while the rings which it so sedulously forms are as sedulously destroyed. The very odour which it exhales under these injuries, which the French call “un parfum exquis aromatisÉ,”[12] and the Italians, “un odore gratissimo,”[13] is in England occasionally cited to its disadvantage in confirmation of its supposed noxious qualities. Thus, while we use the word mushroom, which is the proper appellation of this species, for another (very good, no doubt, but wholly unlike it in its botanical characters, flavour, and appearance), this neglected, and ignorantly neglected, species, finds itself deprived of its rightful name, and proscribed as a toadstool. The origin of this last word, toadstool, which makes them seats or thrones for toads, does not quite satisfy me, I confess, though there be doughty authorities for it in Johnson’s Dictionary and in Spenser’s ‘Faery Queen’!

and, though an anonymous Italian authority declares that, in Germany, they have actually been seen sitting on their stools,[14] still, even in Germany, it must be admitted that they do not use them as frequently as we might expect, had they been created for this end. In that most grisly and ghastly waxwork exhibition at Florence, representing a charnel-house filled with the recent victims to a raging plague, in every stage of decomposition, the toad and his stool are not forgotten; but the artist, who had here to deal with matter, and to consult what it would bear, has not put his toads upon these brittle stools, lest, giving way, both should come to the ground; he has been content to convert them into toad-umbrellas, and to spread them as an awning over their heads.[15]