Eparchides says that Euripides the poet was once staying on a visit at Icarus, and that, when it had happened that a certain woman being with her children in the fields, two of them being full-grown sons and the other being an unmarried daughter, eat some poisonous mushrooms, and died with her children in consequence, he made this epigram upon them:-- O Sun, whose path is through th' undying heaven, Have you e'er before seen a misery such as this? A mother, a maiden daughter, and two sons, All dying on one day by pitiless fate? Diocles the Carystian, in the first book of his treatise on the Wholesomes, says, "The following things which grow wild should be boiled,--beetroot, mallow, sorrel, nettles, spinach, onions, leeks, orach, and mushrooms. 58. Then there is a plant called sium. And Speusippus, in the second book of his treatise on Things Similar, says that its leaf resembles the marsh parsley; on which account Ptolemy the Second, surnamed Euergetes, who was king of Egypt, insists upon it that the line in Homer ought to be written thus-- And around were soft meadows of _sium_ or parsley; for that it is σία which are usually found in company with parsley, and not ἴα (_violets_). 59. Diphilus says that mushrooms are good for the stomach, and pass easily through the bowels, and are very nutritious, but still that they are not very digestible, and that they are apt to produce flatulence. And that especially those from the island of Ceos have this character. "Many are even poisonous to a fatal degree. But those which seem to be wholesome are those with the smoothest rinds, which are tender and easily crushed: such as grow close to elms and pine-trees. But those which are unwholesome are of a dark colour, or livid, or covered with hard coats; and those too which get hard after being boiled and placed on the table; for such are deadly to eat. But the best remedy for them when eaten unawares is drinking honey-water, and fresh mead, and vinegar. And after such a drink the patient should vomit. On which account, too, it is especially desirable to dress mushrooms with vinegar, or honey and vinegar, or honey, or salt: for by these means their choking properties are taken away. But Theophrastus, in his treatise about Plants, writes thus--"But plants of this kind grow both under the ground and on the ground, like those things which some people call fungi, which grow in company with mushrooms; for they too grow without having any roots; but the real mushrooms have, as the beginning by which they adhere to the ground, a stalk of some length, and they put forth fibres from that stalk." He says also that in the sea which is around the Pillars of Hercules, when there is a high tide, mushrooms grow on the shore close to high-water mark, which they say are left there by the sun. And Phænias says, in his first book about Plants--"But these things neither put forth any bloom, nor any trace of seminal