Snake Spit

"Reptile
From Divinities To Snake Pit

None of this lore was much help in fatality prevention; mushrooms remained a perilous attraction-avoidance enigma; to this day, like the Snake, they still arouse fear and revulsion in many people, who on meeting wild ones in the woods, stomp them to a pulp in a frenzy of mycophobia (an unhappy regression from the insights of early peoples who could see in lightning the divine spark which vitalized the inanimate and who sensed in Fungodom a hidden god). But a funny thing has happened; modern science is finding sense in some ancient observations. Pliny was right on: it is now known that an enormous release of fungal spores occurs during thunderstorms, leading to a great increase in asthmatic attacks in susceptible humans, and incidentally, as Pliny noted, to a considerable increase in truffles!"

In publication, Page 19: "Reflections on the Fungaloids" by B.L. Williamson, Ottawa, 1992. ISBN 1-894572-65-3