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 ἀβλαβέστατον to eat—in which good report of it he is abundantly borne out by the concurrent testimony of Nicander. What Dioscorides meant by ἀγαρικὸν 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]