Note 24 — XIII. A USE OF POISONOUS FUNGI QUITE PROBABLY EXISTED AMONG THE MEXICANS.

Higgins believes that the ancient Egyptians had discovered a similarity between the coats of an onion and the planetary spheres, and says that “it was called (by the Greeks), from being sacred to the father of ages, oionoon—onion.... The onion was adored (as the black stone in Westminster Abbey is by us) by the Egyptians for this property as a type of the eternal renewal of ages.... The onion is adored in India, and forbidden to be eaten.”—(Quoting “Forster’s Sketches of Hindoos,” p. 35. Higgins’ “Anacalypsis,” vol. ii. p. 427.)