“The Ostiaks, the Kamtchadales, and other inhabitants of Asiatic Russia, find in one of the gild-bearing family—the _Amanita muscaria_—the exhilaration and madness that more civilized nations demand and receive of alcohol, and enjoy a narcotism from its extracts as seductive as that of opium. The Fiji Islanders are indebted to toadstools strung on a string for girdles which alone prevent them from being classed among the ‘poor and naked,’ and their sole æsthetic occupation lies in ornamenting their limited wardrobe. The Fiji fishermen especially value them highly because they are water-proof. Cerdier tells us that the negroes on the west coast of Africa exalt a certain kind of boletus to the sacredness of a god, and bow down in worship before it; for this reason Afzeltus has named this variety _boletus sacer_. A French chemist has extracted wax from the milk-giving kind, but has not stated the price of candles made from it. Others of the delving fraternity have shown that toadstools may be used in the manufacture of Prussian blue instead of blood, for, like certain animal matter, they furnish prussic acid. As fungi, after the manner of all animal life, breathe oxygen and throw off carbonic acid gas, their flesh partakes of animal rather than of vegetable nature. “In their decomposition they are capital fertilizers of surrounding plants, and in seasons when they are plentiful it will repay the agriculturist to make use of them as manure. “According to Linnæus, the Lapps delighted in the perfume of some species, and carried them upon their persons so that they might be the more attractive. Linnæus exclaims, ‘O Venus! thou that scarcely sufficest thyself in other countries with jewels, diamonds, precious stones, gold, purple, music, and spectacle, art here satisfied with a simple toadstool!’ “A variety of boletus—a tube-bearing species—is powdered, and used as a protector of clothing against insects. The _Agaricus muscarius_ constitutes a well-known poison to the common house-fly. It intoxicates them to such a degree that they can be swept up and destroyed. “Certain polypori—those large, dry, corky growths found upon logs and trees—when properly seasoned, sliced, and beaten, engage large manufactories in producing from them the punk of commerce, used by the surgeon for the arrest of hemorrhage, the artist for his shading stump, and the Fourth of July urchin for his pyrotechnic purposes. A species of polyporus is used in Italy as scrubbing brushes. In countries where fire-producing is unknown or laborious, and the luxury of lucifers denied, the dried fungus enables the transportation of fire from one place to another over great distances. “The inhabitants of Franconia use the hammered slices instead of chamois-skin for underclothing.