THE
ESCULENT FUNGUSES
OF
ENGLAND.

A TREATISE
ON THE
ESCULENT FUNGUSES
OF
ENGLAND,
CONTAINING
AN ACCOUNT OF THEIR CLASSICAL HISTORY, USES, CHARACTERS,
DEVELOPMENT, STRUCTURE, NUTRITIOUS PROPERTIES,
MODES OF COOKING AND PRESERVING, ETC.

BY
CHARLES DAVID BADHAM, M.D.

EDITED BY FREDERICK CURREY, M.A., F.R.S., F.L.S.

Πολλὰ μὲν ἔσθλά μεμιγμένα πολλὰ δὲ λυγρά.—Homer.

LONDON:
LOVELL REEVE & CO., HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
1863.

PRINTED BY
JOHN EDWARD TAYLOR, LITTLE QUEEN STREET,
LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

My lamented friend Dr. Badham having died since the first publication of this work, my advice was asked upon the subject of the preparation of a new edition. It was wished that the text of the work should be altered as little as possible, and that the price of the book should be materially lessened. The latter object could not be effected without reducing the number of the Plates; but it appeared to me that some plates relating to details of structure might very well be omitted, as well as the figures of a few Italian species which, although interesting in themselves, are quite unnecessary in a book on British Esculent Fungi. With the exception of the omission of the description of these latter species, and the addition of the description of two other species hereafter referred to, the alterations in the text are too trifling to require notice. With regard to the Figures in this edition, most of them are those of the former plates, somewhat reduced; a few have been taken from the plates of Mr. Berkeley’s ‘Outlines of British Fungology,’ and a few from original and other sources.

By a re-arrangement of the whole, the reduction in the number of the Plates has been effected, and, at the same time, figures of all the Fungi represented in the first edition have been given, as well as of two other species not there noticed. I should observe, however, that by a mistake of the artist an extra figure of the Horse Mushroom has been inserted in Plate IV. instead of one of the Common Mushroom.

The two species above alluded to which were not figured in the first edition, are Tuber æstivum and Helvella esculenta. The former must have been inadvertently omitted by Dr. Badham, as it has long been known as abundant in certain parts of England. Helvella esculenta, although alluded to by Dr. Badham, was not at that time known to be a British species. It has since been observed near Weybridge in Surrey, where it occurs almost every spring. The plant figured in Pl. XV. fig. 6 of the first edition under the name of Lycoperdon plumbeum, is not that species, but Lycoperdon pyriforme; it will be found at [Pl. VIII. fig. 5]. Dr. Badham states that all puff-balls are esculent, but, judging from the smell of Lycoperdon pyriforme, I should much doubt whether it would make an agreeable dish. Lycoperdon plumbeum is now better known as Bovista plumbea, and Lycoperdon Bovista as Lycoperdon giganteum.

There is some confusion about the synonymy of the plants described by Dr. Badham as Agaricus prunulus and Ag. exquisitus. It is unnecessary to discuss the matter here, and I have thought it not desirable under the circumstances to alter Dr. Badham’s nomenclature. They appear to be described in Mr. Berkeley’s work as Ag. gambosus, Fr., and Ag. arvensis, Schœff.

Dr. Badham’s observations on the spores of Fungi must be read in connection with the note added by him at the conclusion of the work; and to those who are interested in that part of the subject I should recommend the perusal of the seventh chapter of Mr. Berkeley’s ‘Outlines of British Fungology,’ and Tulasne’s recent work, ‘Selecta Fungorum Carpologia.’

Mr. Cooke, in his ‘Plain and Easy Account of British Fungi,’ recently published, mentions some species as esculent which are not noticed in this work. I have however no experience of their qualities, and must refer the reader to Mr. Cooke’s book for further information. He mentions Mr. Berkeley as an authority for considering Agaricus rubescens as suspicious; but, from long experience, I can vouch for its being not only wholesome, but, as Dr. Badham says, “a very delicate fungus.”

F. C.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

TO THE RIGHT REVEREND THE LORD BISHOP OF NORWICH.

My Lord,

I had two reasons for desiring that this humble performance should appear under the sanction of your Lordship’s name. Nothing could be more favourable to a Treatise on any department of Natural History, than the approval of one who has been so eminently successful in his cultivation of the same field.

But it is with much greater confidence that I dedicate a work, whose chief object it is to furnish the labouring classes with wholesome nourishment and profitable occupation, to a high functionary of that kingdom, which is distinguished from all others by recognizing the claims and furthering the interests of the poor.

I have the honour to be, my Lord,

With great respect, your Lordship’s

Obliged and humble Servant,

C. D. Badham.

CONTENTS.

DESCRIPTION OF PLATES.

INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.

No country is perhaps richer in esculent Funguses than our own; we have upwards of thirty species abounding in our woods. No markets might therefore be better supplied than the English, and yet England is the only country in Europe where this important and savoury food is, from ignorance or prejudice, left to perish ungathered.

In France, Germany, and Italy, Funguses not only constitute for weeks together the sole diet of thousands, but the residue, either fresh, dried, or variously preserved in oil, vinegar, or brine, is sold by the poor, and forms a valuable source of income to many who have no other produce to bring into the market. Well, then, may we style them, with M. Roques, “the manna of the poor.” To call attention to an article of commerce elsewhere so lucrative, with us so wholly neglected, is the object of the present work, to which the best possible introduction will be a brief reference to the state of the fungus market abroad.

The following brief summary was drawn up by Professor Sanguinetti, the Official Inspector (“Ispettore dei Funghi”) at Rome; let it speak for itself:—“For forty days during the autumn, and for about half that period every spring, large quantities of Funguses, picked in the immediate vicinity of Rome, from Frascati, Rocca di Papa, Albano, beyond Monte Mario towards Ostia and the neighbourhood of the sites of Veii and Gabii, are brought in at the different gates. In the year 1837, the Government instituted the so-called Congregazione Speciale di Sanità, which, among other duties, was more particularly required to take into serious consideration the commerce of Funguses, from the unrestricted sale of which during some years past, cases of poisoning had not unfrequently occurred. The following decisions were arrived at by this body:—

“1st. That for the future an ‘Inspector of Funguses,’ versed in botany, should be appointed to attend the market in place of the peasant, whose supposed practical knowledge had been hitherto held as sufficient guarantee for the public safety.

“2nd. That all the Funguses brought into Rome by the different gates should be registered, under the surveillance of the principal officer, in whose presence also the baskets were to be sealed up, and the whole for that day’s consumption sent under escort to a central depôt.

“3rd. That a certain spot should be fixed upon for the Fungus market, and that nobody, under penalty of fine and imprisonment, should hawk them about the streets.

“4th. That at seven o’clock A.M. precisely, the Inspector should pay his daily visit and examine the whole, the contents of the baskets being previously emptied on the ground by the proprietors, who were then to receive, if the Funguses were approved of, a printed permission of sale from the police, and to pay for it an impost of one baioccho (a halfpenny) on every ten pounds.

“5th. That quantities under ten pounds should not be taxed.

“6th. That the stale funguses of the preceding day, as well as those that were mouldy, bruised, filled with maggots, or dangerous (muffi, guasti, verminosi, velenosi), together with any specimen of the common mushroom (Ag. campestris) detected in any of the baskets, should be sent under escort and thrown into the Tiber.

“7th. That the Inspector should be empowered to fine or imprison all those refractory to the above regulations; and, finally, that he should furnish a weekly report to the Tribunal of Provisions (Il Tribunale delle Grascie) of the proceeds of the sale.

“As all fresh Funguses for sale in quantities exceeding ten pounds are weighed, in order to be taxed, we are enabled to arrive at an exact estimate of the number of pounds thus disposed of. The return of taxed Mushrooms in the city of Rome during the last ten years, gives a yearly average of between sixty and eighty thousand pounds weight; and if we double this amount, as we may safely do, in order to include such smaller untaxed supplies as are disposed of as bribes, fees, and presents, and reckon the whole at the rate of six baiocchi, or threepence per pound (a fair average), this will make the commercial value of fresh Funguses very apparent, showing it here to be little less than £2000 a year.”

But the fresh Funguses form only a small part of the whole consumption, to which must be added the dried, the pickled, and the preserved; which sell at a much higher price than the first.[2] Supposing, however, that with these additions the supply of all kinds only reached a sum the double of that given above, even this would furnish us with an annual average of nearly four thousand pounds sterling; and this in a single city, and that, too, by no means the most populous one in Italy![3] What, then, must be the net receipts of all the market-places of all the Italian States? For as in these the proportion of the price of esculent Funguses to butchers’ meat is as two to three, it is plain that prejudice has deprived the poor of this country, not only of many thousand pounds of the former but also of as much of the latter, as might have been purchased by exchange, and of the countless sums which might have been earned in gathering them.[4]

ON THE ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.

“Quos ipsa volentia rura

Sponte tulere sua carpsit.”—Virgil.

“He culls from woods, and heights, and fields,

Those untaxed boons which nature yields.”

ETYMOLOGIES.

By the word μύκης, ητος or ου, ὁ, whereof the usually received root, μῦκος (mucus), is probably factitious, the Greeks used familiarly to designate certain, but indefinite species of funguses, which they were in the habit of employing at table. This term, in its origin at once trivial and restricted to at most a few varieties, has become in our days classical and generic; Mycology, its direct derivative, including, in the language of modern botany, several great sections of plants (many amongst the number of microscopic minuteness), which have apparently as little to do with the original import of μύκης as smut, bunt, mould, or dry-rot, have to do with our table mushrooms. A like indefiniteness formerly characterized the Latin word fungus, though it be now used in as catholic a sense as that of μύκης; this, in the classic times of Rome, seems to have been confined (without any precise limitation, however) to certain sorts which might be eaten, and to others which it was not safe to eat. The

“Fungos colligit albos,”[5]

which occurs in Ovid’s ‘Fasti,’ alludes to the former; the

“Sunt tibi boleti, fungos ego sumo suillos,”

of Martial, points to an inferior kind, but still esculent; whilst the word not unfrequently designated, if not actual toadstools, at least very equivocal mushrooms; of which character were those “ancipites fungi” presented by Veiento to his poor clients. Some melancholy etymologists, upon whom good mushrooms are really thrown away, would beget fungus out of funus, but Voss[6] judiciously rejects so harsh and forced a derivation, mentioning together with it others that are still more so.

The word Boletus, which now stands for a large genus of the section Pileati, was used in ancient Rome to designate that particular mushroom which had the honour, under Agrippina’s orders and Locusta’s cookery, of poisoning Claudius; in memory of which event it is now called Amanita Cæsarea, the Cæsar’s mushroom. It occurs frequently both in the poets and prose writers of those days, and was in high esteem, as we collect from Pliny, who, though no mushroom-fancier himself, calls this “Boletus optimi cibi.” Nero, in playful allusion to his uncle’s death, of which it was the occasion, designates it the ‘food of gods,’ βρῶμα θεῶν; and Martial celebrates it in many a convivial epigram; in one, for instance, where he asks his hard-hearted patron, “what possible pleasure it can be for his guests to sit at his table, and see him devour boletuses;” in another, “gold and silver and dresses may be trusted to a messenger, but not a boletus, (subaudi) because he will eat it on the way.” This is the only ancient mushroom which we at once recognize by the description of it; “it originates,” says Pliny, “in a volva, or purse, in which it lies at first concealed as in an egg; breaking through this, it rises upwards on its stalk; the colour of its cap is red; it takes a week to pass through the various stages of its growth and declension.” The suillus—probably the same as the modern porcino (a word of analogous import), which was, and is, eaten by men as well as pigs, and not always by these[7]—was, according to Pliny, the fungus which most readily lent itself to poisoning by mistake; a remark so far consonant to modern experience, that it is liable, without some attention, to be confounded with the Boletus luridus, B. cyanescens, and others, which in their general shape and external hue resemble it, though it is not by any means certain that any of these species, with which it may be confounded, are themselves poisonous.[8] The word tuber, though it occasionally (as in Juvenal) meant the truffle, seems to have been used with considerable latitude. Thus the tubers said to spring up after those optatos imbres, those “long-wished-for showers of spring,” were, probably, not truffles, but puff-balls, which, at the season of warm rains grow with incredible rapidity, forming an esteemed article of luxury, not only in Italy, but also in India; whereas the truffle never makes its appearance in the markets at such times, nor comes up so immediately after rain. Tuber, like our ancient “fusseball,” seems a common appellation both for truffles and puff-balls. What the ancients understood by hydnum is as little precise or discriminate as the last word; for Theophrastus declares it to have a light bark, λειόφλοιον εἶναι, in which case it is a puff-ball, while the plant called ὑδνοφίλον, which is said to indicate the whereabouts of hydna in its neighbourhood, can only refer to the truffle. 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]

The words champignon and mushroom have both a French origin, though, like the corresponding derivatives from the Greek and Latin, they too have come to signify things different from what they originally designated; champignon, for example, of which champ would seem to be the root, is generic in France. The ‘Traités sur les Champignons’ of Bulliard, Persoon, Paulet, Cordier, and Roques, are treatises of funguses in genere; whilst in England we restrict the word champignon to one small Agaric, which, as it grows in the so-called “fairy-rings,” is hence named Ag. oreades. Again, there can be no doubt that our word mushroom (which, as contradistinguished from toadstool, is so far generic) comes from the French mouceron (originally spelt mousseron), and belongs of right to that most dainty of funguses, the A. prunulus, which grows amidst tender herbage and moss (whence its name), and which is justly considered, over almost the whole continent of Europe, as the ne plus ultra of culinary friandise. It abounds in various parts of England, being everywhere trodden underfoot, or reaped down, or dug up as a nuisance, while the rings which it so sedulously forms are as sedulously destroyed. The very odour which it exhales under these injuries, which the French call “un parfum exquis aromatisé,”[12] and the Italians, “un odore gratissimo,”[13] is in England occasionally cited to its disadvantage in confirmation of its supposed noxious qualities. Thus, while we use the word mushroom, which is the proper appellation of this species, for another (very good, no doubt, but wholly unlike it in its botanical characters, flavour, and appearance), this neglected, and ignorantly neglected, species, finds itself deprived of its rightful name, and proscribed as a toadstool. The origin of this last word, toadstool, which makes them seats or thrones for toads, does not quite satisfy me, I confess, though there be doughty authorities for it in Johnson’s Dictionary and in Spenser’s ‘Faery Queen’!

“The grisly todestool grown there mought I see,

And loathed paddocks lording on the same;”

and, though an anonymous Italian authority declares that, in Germany, they have actually been seen sitting on their stools,[14] still, even in Germany, it must be admitted that they do not use them as frequently as we might expect, had they been created for this end. In that most grisly and ghastly waxwork exhibition at Florence, representing a charnel-house filled with the recent victims to a raging plague, in every stage of decomposition, the toad and his stool are not forgotten; but the artist, who had here to deal with matter, and to consult what it would bear, has not put his toads upon these brittle stools, lest, giving way, both should come to the ground; he has been content to convert them into toad-umbrellas, and to spread them as an awning over their heads.[15]

THE RANGE OF FUNGUS GROWTHS.

The family of Funguses, in the comprehensive sense in which we now employ the term, is immense. Merely catalogued and described, there are sufficient to fill an octavo volume of nearly 400 pages of close print, of British species alone; altogether, there cannot be less than 5000 recognized species at present known, and each year adds new ones to the list. The reader’s surprise at this will somewhat diminish, when he considers, that not only the toadstools which beset his walks, whether growing upon the ground or at the roots of trees, belong to this class, but that the immense hordes of parasites which feed at his expense, and foul, like the Harpies, whatever they may not actually consume, belong to it also.

For the single mushroom that we eat, how many hundreds there be that retaliate and prey upon us in return! To enumerate but a few, and these of the microscopic kinds (on the other side are some which the arms can scarcely embrace): the Mucor mucedo, that spawns upon our dried preserves; the Ascophora mucedo, that makes our bread mouldy (“mucidæ frustra farinæ”[16]); the Uredo segetum, that burns Ceres out of her own cornfields; the Uredo rubigo, whose rust is still more destructive; and the Puccinia graminis, whose voracity sets corn-laws and farmers at defiance, are all funguses! So is the grey Monilia, that rots, and then fattens upon, our fruits; and the Mucor herbariorum, that destroys the careful gleanings of the painstaking botanist. When our beer becomes mothery, the mother of that mischief is a fungus. If pickles acquire a bad taste, if ketchup turns ropy and putrifies, funguses have a finger in it all! Their reign stops not here; they prey upon each other; they even select their victims! There is the Myrothecium viride, which will only grow upon dry Agarics, preferring chiefly, for this purpose, the Agaricus adustus; the Mucor[17] chrysospermus, which attacks the flesh of a particular Boletus; the Sclerotium cornutum, which visits some other moist mushrooms in decay. There are some Xylomas that will spot the leaves of the Maple, and some those of the Willow, exclusively. The naked seeds of some are found burrowing between the opposite surface of leaves; some love the neighbourhood of burnt stubble and charred wood; some visit the sculptor in his studio, growing up amidst the heaps of moistened marble dust that have caked and consolidated under his saw. The Racodium of the low cellar[18] festoons its ceiling, shags its walls, and wraps its thick coat round our wine-casks,[19] keeping our oldest wine in closest bond; while the Geastrum, aspiring occasionally to leave this earth, has been found suspended, like Mahomet’s coffin, between it and the stars, on the very highest pinnacle of St. Paul’s.[20] The close cavities of nuts occasionally afford concealment to some species; others, like leeches, stick to the bulbs of plants, and suck them dry; these (the architect’s and ship-builder’s bane) pick timber to pieces, as men pick oakum; nor do they confine their selective ravages to plants alone, they attach themselves to animal structures, and destroy animal life; the Onygena equina has a particular fancy for the hoofs of horses and for the horns of cattle, sticking to these alone; the belly of a tropical fly[21] is liable, in autumn, to break out into vegetable tufts of fungous growth, and the caterpillar to carry about on his body a Cordyceps larger than himself. The disease called Muscadine, which destroys so many silkworms, is also a fungus (Botrytis Bassiana), which in a very short time completely fills the worm with filaments very unlike those it is in the habit of secreting.[22] The vegetating wasp,[23] too, of which everybody has heard, is only another mysterious blending of vegetable with insect life. Lastly, and to take breath, funguses visit the wards of our hospitals, and grow out of the products of surgical disease.[24] Where, then, are they not to be found? do they not abound, like Pharaoh’s plagues, everywhere? is not their name legion, and their province ubiquity?[25]

OF THEIR GENERAL FORMS, COLOURS, TEXTURE, TASTES, SMELLS, ETC.

What geometry shall define their ever-varying shapes? who but a Venetian painter do justice to their colours?[26] or what modifications of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ convey an adequate knowledge of all their various crases and consistencies? As to shapes, some are simple threads, like the Byssus, and never get beyond this; some shoot out into branches, like seaweed; some puff themselves out into puff-balls; some thrust their heads into mitres;[27] these assume the shape of a cup,[28] and those of a wine-funnel;[29] some, like A. mammosus, have a teat; others, like the A. clypeolarius, are umbonated at their centre; these are stilted upon a high leg,[30] and those have not a leg to stand on; some are shell-shaped, many bell-shaped, and some hang upon their stalks like a lawyer’s wig;[31] some assume the form of the horse’s hoof, others of a goat’s beard: in Clathrus cancellatus you look into the fungus through a thick red trellis which surrounds it. Some exhibit a nest in which they rear their young,[32] and, not to speak of those vague shapes,

“If shapes they can be called, that shape have none

Determinate,”

of such tree parasites as are fain to mould themselves at the will of their entertainer (the fate of parasites, whether under oak or mahogany), mention may be made of two, of which the forms are at once singular and constant; one exactly like an ear, and given for some good reason to Judas (Auricula Judæ), clings to several trees, and trembles when you touch it; the other, which lolls out from the bark of chestnut-trees (Lingua di Castagna), is so like a tongue in shape and general appearance,[33] that in the days of enchanted trees you would not have cut it off to pickle or to eat on any account, lest the knight to whom it belonged should afterwards come to claim it of you. The above are amongst the most remarkable of the many Protean forms assumed by funguses; as to their colours, we find in one genus only species which correspond to every hue! The Agaricus Cæsareus, the A. muscarius, the A. sanguineus, assume the imperial purple, the A. violaceus a beautiful violet, the A. sulphureus a bright yellow, the A. adustus a dingy black, the A. exquisitus, and many others, a milk-white; whilst the A. virescens takes that which, in this class of plants, is the rarest of all to meet with, a pale-green colour. The upper surface of some is zoned with concentric circles of different hues; sometimes it is spotted, at other times of a uniform tint. The bonnets of some shine as if they were sprinkled with mica;[34] these have a rich velvety, those a smooth kid-like covering stretched over them. Some pilei are imbricated with brown scales, some flocked with white shreds of membrane, and some are stained with various-coloured milks secreted from within. The consistence of funguses is very different according to their sort, and the epithets of woody, corky, leathery, spongy, fleshy, gelatinous, pulpy, or mucous, will all find fitting application to some of them. Occasionally a fungus is secreted soft, but hardens by degrees into a compact and woody texture.

ODOURS AND TASTES.

Both one and the other are far more numerous in this class of plants than in any other with which we are acquainted. As to odours, though these be generally most powerful in the fresh condition of the fungus, they are sometimes increased by drying it, during which process too some species, inodorous before, acquire an odour, and not always a pleasant one. Some yield an insupportable stench; the Phallus impudicus and Clathrus cancellatus are of this kind. A botanist had by mistake taken one of the former into his bedroom; he was soon awakened by an intolerable fœtor, and was glad to open his window and get rid of it, as he hoped, and the Phallus together. Here he was disappointed; “sublatâ causâ non tollitur effectus,” the fœtor remaining nearly the same for some hours afterwards. A lady, a friend of mine, who was drawing one in a room, was obliged to take it into the open air to complete her sketch. As to the Clathrus, I have found ten minutes in a room with it nine too many: it becomes insupportably offensive in a short time, and its infective stench has given rise to a superstition entertained of it throughout the Landes, viz. that it is capable of producing cancer—in consequence of which superstition the inhabitants, who call it Cancrou, or Cancer, cover it carefully over, lest by accident some one should chance to touch it, and become infected with that horrible disease in consequence.[35] Batsch has described an Agaric[36] of so powerful and peculiar a smell, that before he could finish his picture (for he was drawing it) a violent headache made him desist, “vehementi afficiebar capitis dolore.” Of the others, some are graveolent in a savoury or in an unsavoury sense. This smells strong of onions,[37] that of cinnamon,[38] from which it takes its name; the A. ostreatus (auct. nost.) most powerfully of Tarragon; A. odoratus, and the Cantharellus, like apricots and ratafia (Purton); Boletus salicinus, “like the bloom of May” (Abbott); the A. sanguineus, when dry, savours of a stale poultice; A. piperatus, of the Triglia, or red mullet; the Hydna generally give out a smell of tallow; moulds have their own smells, which are mouldy and musty; some exhale the smell of putrid meat, many the odour of fresh meal; the spawn of A. prunulus and of the puff-balls (Lycoperdons) exhale an odour similar to the perfect plants; but the Pietra funghaia, filled with the spores of its own Polyporus, is without smell. When fresh, there is scarcely any perceptible odour in Boletus edulis or B. luridus, nor yet in the A. Cæsareus when recently gathered. A word about their tastes will suffice: with so many smells, they must needs have flavours to correspond, and so they have; sapid, sweet, sour, peppery, rich, rank, acrid, nauseous, bitter, styptic, might be all found in an English “gradus” (though at present, I am sorry to say, without any lines from poets in whose writings they occur), after the word ‘Fungus.’ In a few, generally of an unsafe character, there is little or no taste in the mouth while they are being masticated, but shortly after deglutition, the fauces become dry, and a sense of more or less constriction is apt to supervene, which frequently continues for some time afterwards.

EXPANSIVE POWER OF GROWTH.

Soft and yielding as vegetable structures appear to the touch, the expansive force of their growth is almost beyond calculation. The effects of this power, of which the experience of every one will furnish him with some instances, are perhaps nowhere more strikingly exemplified than amidst the ruins of its own creation. Coeval with many old brick fabrics of earlier times, perhaps embedded in the very mortar which holds them together, it may lurk there for centuries in quiescence, till once arousing its energies, it continues to exert them in ceaseless activity ever after. It has at Rome planted its pink Valerians on her highest towers, and its wild fig-tree in the breaches of her walls; nor are the granite obelisks of her piazzas, nor the classic groups in marble on her Quirinal mount, entirely exempt from its encroachments. A conspiracy of plants, one hundred strong, have long ago planned the destruction of the Coliseum; their undermining process advances each year, and neither iron nor new brickwork can arrest it long. That old Roman cement, which the barbarians gave up as impracticable, and the pickaxe of the Barberini had but begun to disintegrate, will, ere the lapse of another century, be effectually pulled to pieces by the rending arm of vegetation. Here, as erst in Juvenal’s time, the mala ficus finds no walls too strong to rive asunder, no tower beyond the reach of its scaling, no monument too sacred for it to touch. In the class of plants immediately under consideration, while the expansive effort of growth is equal to what it is in other cases, its effects are far more startling from their suddenness. M. Bulliard (to cite one or two instances out of a great many) relates, that on placing a Phallus impudicus within a glass vessel, the plant expanded so rapidly as to shiver its sides with an explosive detonation as loud as that of a pistol. Dr. Carpenter, in his ‘Elements of Physiology,’ mentions that “in the neighbourhood of Basingstoke a paving-stone, measuring twenty-one inches square, and weighing eighty-three pounds, was completely raised an inch and a half out of its bed by a mass of toadstools, of from six to seven inches in diameter, and that nearly the whole pavement of the town suffered displacement from the same cause.” A friend has seen a crop of puff-balls raise large flagstones considerably above the plane of their original level; and I have myself recently witnessed an extensive displacement of the pegs of a wooden pavement which had been driven nine inches into the ground, but were heaved up irregularly, in several places, by small bouquets of Agarics, growing from below.

REPRODUCTIVE POWER.

Funguses have a remarkable power of re-forming such parts of their substance as have been accidentally or otherwise removed. Vittadini found that when the tubes of a Boletus were cut out from a growing plant, they were after a time reproduced. Where deep holes have been eaten into these plants by snails, such holes, on the Boletus attaining to its full growth, are partially refilled. If the tender Polyporus be cut across, the wound immediately sets about healing by the first intention, leaving not even a cicatrice to mark the original seat of the injury. The Lycoperdons (Bovista), which are often accidentally wounded by the scythe, have the same faculty of repairing the injury, remodelling afresh the parts that may have been excised from them.[39]

MOTION.

In a recent work on ‘Insect Life,’ I have discoursed somewhat at large on the insufficiency of any kind of movements as proofs of sensation, quoting, amidst other evidences to this effect, certain remarkable movements in plants. Some of the present family exhibit the phenomena of insensitive motion in a remarkable manner, and might have been added to the list already cited in that publication. Mr. Robson has given us a very interesting account of the movements he observed in the scarlet Clathrus, which is here transcribed in his own words. It is interesting to notice how an unbiassed observer uses the very terms to designate the movements of a plant which would have been minutely descriptive of those of an insect:—“At first I was much surprised to see a part of the fibres, that had got through a rupture in the top of the Clathrus, moving like the legs of a fly when laid on his back. I then touched it with the point of a pin, and was still more surprised when I saw it present the appearance of a little bundle of worms entangled together, the fibres being all alive. I next took the little bundle of fibres quite out, and the animal motion was then so strong as to turn the head halfway round, first one way and then another, and two or three times it got out of the focus. Almost every fibre had a different motion; some of them twined round one another, and then untwined again, whilst others were bending, extending, coiling, waving, etc. The fibres had many little balls adhering to their sides, which I take to be the seeds, and I observed many of them to be disengaged at every motion of the fibres; the seeds appeared like gunpowder finely granulated.” Instances from other authors abound. “An Helvella inflata, on being touched by me once, threw up its seeds in the form of a smoke, which arose with an elastic bound, glittering in the sunshine like particles of silver.”[40] “The Vibrissea truncorum, taken from water and exposed to the rays of the sun, though at first smooth, is soon covered with white geniculated filaments, which start from the hymenium, and have an oscillating motion.”[41] The Pilobolus, of which so accurate an account has been given us by the great Florentine mycologist,[42] casts, as its name imports, its seeds into the air; these also escape with a strong projectile force from the upper surface of Pezizas, the anfractuosities of the Morel, and from the gills of Agarics.[43]

PHOSPHORESCENCE.

Several kinds of funguses, and the spawn of the truffle, emit a phosphorescent light; of the first, the Agaricus olearius, not uncommon in Italy, is sometimes seen at night, feebly shining amidst the darkness of the olive grove. The coal-mines near Dresden have long been celebrated for the production of funguses which emit a light similar to a pale moonlight. Mr. Drummond describes an Australian fungus with similar properties; and another very interesting one, an Agaric, is noticed by Mr. Gardner, in his ‘Travels in Brazil.’[44]

DIMENSIONS.

Most funguses do not present great anomalies in their size, but retain nearly the same dimensions throughout the whole course of their being; some few species, however, seem to have a faculty of almost indefinite expansion. The usual size of a puff-ball, as we all know, is not much larger than an egg, but some puff-balls attain to the dimensions of the human head,[45] or exceed it. Mr. Berkeley quotes the case of a Polyporus squamosus, which in three weeks grew to seven feet five inches in periphery, and weighed thirty-four pounds; also of a Polyporus fraxineus, which in a few years measured forty-two inches across. Clusius[46] tells us of a fungus in Pannonia, of such immense size, that after satisfying the cravings of a large mycophilous household, enough of it remained to fill a chariot; this must have been the Polyporus frondosus, to which Polyporus John Bapt. Porta[47] also alludes as that called gallinace[48] by the Neapolitans, which is so big, he says, that you can scarcely make your hands meet round it, “brachiis diductis vix homo complecti possit;” he had known it attain twelve pounds weight in a few days.[49] Bolton, in 1787, found an Agaricus muscarius, which, “after the removal of a considerable portion of its stalk, weighed nearly two pounds;” Withering, an A. Georgii, “which weighed fourteen pounds,” and Mr. Stackhouse another of the same species in Cornwall, “which was eighteen inches across, and had a stem as thick as a man’s wrist;” and I lately picked in the park at Buckhurst, a Boletus edulis which measured twenty-eight inches round its pileus, and eight round the stem, and a few days later a B. pachypus, the girth of which was thirty-two inches.

CHEMICAL COMPOSITION.

Of all vegetable productions these are the most highly azotized, that is, animalized in their composition—a fact not only evinced by the strong cadaverous smell which some of them give out in decay, and by the savoury animalized meat which others afford at table, but on the evidence of chemistry also. Thus Dr. Marcet has proved that, like animals, they absorb a large quantity of oxygen, and disengage in return, from their surface, a large quantity of carbonic acid; all however do not exhale carbonic acid, but, in lieu of it, some give out hydrogen, and others azotic gas. They yield, moreover, to chemical analysis the several components of which animal structures are made up; many of them, in addition to sugar, gum, resin, a peculiar acid called fungic acid, and a variety of salts, furnish considerable quantities of albumen, adipocire, and osmazome, which last is that principle that gives its peculiar flavour to meat gravy. The Polyporus sulphureus is frequently covered with little crystals of the binoxalate of potash;[50] the Agaricus piperatus yields the acetate of potash,[51] and it is probable that other funguses of which we have as yet no recorded analysis will, on the institution of such, be found to contain some new and unexpected ingredient peculiar to themselves. When these several substances have been duly extracted from funguses, there is left behind for a common base the solid structure of the plant itself; this, which is called fungine, is white, flabby, insipid in its taste, but highly nutritious in its properties. If nitric acid be poured upon it, an immediate disengagement of azotic gas takes place, and several new substances are the result: a bitter principle, a reddish resinoid matter, hydrocyanic and oxalic acids, and two remarkable fatty substances, whereof one resembles tallow, the other wax. If dilute sulphuric acid be poured upon this fungine, no change ensues; but if muriatic acid be substituted, the result is a jelly.

USES.

The uses to which funguses have been put are various, and, had the properties of these plants been as extensively investigated as those which belong to the phanerogamic classes, they would probably by this time have proved still more numerous: some, as the Polyporus sulphureus, furnish a useful colour for dyeing;[52] the Agaricus atramentarius makes ink; divers Lycoperdons, of which other mention will be made presently when we come to speak of such species as are esculent, have also been employed for stupefying bees, for stanching blood, and for making tinder; their employment in the first of these capacities, seems to have escaped the observation of the accurate author of ‘Les Jardins,’ who has mentioned the others:—

“Ce puissant Agaric, qui du sang épanché

Arrête les ruisseaux, et dont le sein fidèle

Du caillou pétillant recueille l’étincelle.”

The ‘caillou,’ alas, like the poet who struck this spark out of it, is now obsolete; but amadou is still in vogue, being employed for many household purposes; in addition to which, a medical practitioner of Covent Garden has of late been in the habit of using extensive sheets of it to cover over and protect the backs of those bedridden invalids whose cruel sufferings make such large demands upon our sympathy,—for the alleviation of which so little is to be done!—as it is more elastic than chamois leather, it is less liable to crumple up when lain upon, and on this account has been preferred to it by several of our metropolitan surgeons of eminence; some employ it also as a gentle compress over varicose veins, where it supports the distended vessels without pressing too tightly upon the limb. Gleditsch relates, that the poorer inhabitants of Franconia stitch it together, and make dresses of it; and also that the Laplanders burn it in the neighbourhood of their dwellings, to secure their reindeer from the attacks of gadflies, which are repelled by the smoke; thus “good at need,” it really deserves the epithet of ‘puissant,’ given to it by Delille.[53]

The Polyporus squamosus makes a razor-strop far superior to any of those at present patented, and sold, with high-sounding epithets, far beyond their deserts. To prepare the Polyporus for this purpose, it must be cut from the ash-tree in autumn, when its juices have been dried and its substance has become consolidated; it is then to be flattened out for twenty-four hours in a press, after which it should be carefully rubbed with pumice, sliced longitudinally, and every slip that is free from the erosions of insects be then glued upon a wooden stretcher. Cesalpinus knew all this! and the barbers in his time knew it too;[54] and it is not a little remarkable that so useful an invention should, in an age of puffing, advertisement, and improvement, like our own, have been entirely lost sight of. Imperato employed and recommends it as an excellent detergent, with which to brush and comb out the scurf from the hair.

The Agaricus muscarius is largely employed in Kamtchatka, in decoction with the Epilobium angustifolium, as an intoxicating liquor.[55] The Laplanders smear it on the walls and bedposts of their dwellings, to destroy bugs (Linn.); and Clusius relates, that it is sold extensively in the market at Frankfort, to poison flies; for this purpose, it is either cut into small pieces and thrown about the premises, or else boiled in milk and placed upon the window-sills; in either case it is vastly inferior in efficacy to that celebrated “mort aux mouches,” the impure oxide of cobalt, that is, to the arsenic which this contains. The above are a few of the uses, exclusive of the esculent or medical ones, to which funguses have been put; it is fair, however, to notice that they maintain a debtor, as well as a creditor, account with mankind, in which the balance seems to be occasionally quite against us; those that are most injurious are generally, as has been already stated, of the microscopic kinds; whereof some attack young plants still underground, emulging them completely of their juices, in consequence of which they perish; others, like the corn-blights, permit the plant to attain maturity before they begin their work of destruction, and destroy it just as it is beginning to fructify.[56] The fearful epidemics to which grain so infected has given rise are well known, though it is still a matter of question whether the ergoted corn owes its unwholesome qualities to the injury which it had sustained from the blight, or to the blight itself. Though the mischief produced by parasitic funguses be unquestionably great, this occasional and very partial evil is more than compensated by the much greater amount of good accomplished solely by their agency, in the assistance they afford to the decomposition of animal and vegetable tissues, which has procured for them the name, not unaptly applied, of “nature’s scavengers.” This decomposition they effect by assimilating, through the medium of their radicles, the juices of the decaying structure in which they are developed, loosening thereby its cohesion, and causing it to break up into a rapid dissolution of its parts.[57]

MEDICAL USES.

Of the funguses formerly employed in medicine few are now in vogue; the ergot of rye still keeps its ground, and in cases of protracted labour, when judiciously employed, is valuable in assisting nature when unequal to the necessary efforts of parturition. Another fungus, formerly much in fashion, though now put on the shelf, seems really to deserve further trial; I mean the Polyporus suaveolens (Linn.), which in that most intractable disease, tubercular consumption, surely claims to be tried when there are such respectable authorities to vouch for its surprising effects, in cases where everything else had been notoriously unsuccessful.[58] Sartorius was the first to prescribe it as a remedy in phthisis, and its employment with this view, since his day, has at various times been præconized on the Continent; the dose generally recommended being a scruple of the powder two or three times a day. Of the cases published by Professors Schmidel and Wendst (which have an air of good faith in their recital, well entitling them to consideration), I abridge one as an example, though the others are not less interesting; and while it is certainly to be regretted that the absence of stethoscopic indications should prevent our having any positive evidence as to the precise condition of the diseased lung, or of the nature of the secretion expectorated, still, even supposing them to be simple cases of chronic bronchitis, with marasmus the efficacy of the remedy is scarcely less striking or instructive. “A young man, ætat. twenty-one, was seized at the beginning of autumn with inflammatory cough and hæmoptysis, which were partially subdued by V. S. and the ordinary antiphlogistic treatment; but the cough, coming on again with renewed severity during the winter, was accompanied with the expuition of glairy mucus, which was sometimes specked with blood. Towards the spring the young man had become much thinner, and was continuing to waste away; the expectoration also had changed its colour, and had become fetid and green; his nights were feverish and disturbed; he had no desire for food, and ate but little; his ankles had begun to swell; he had copious night-sweats and diarrhœa. A teaspoonful of an electuary of the P. suaveolens in honey was given him three times a day, and nothing else; and, extraordinary as it may appear, under this treatment the sweats speedily began to diminish with the cough, and after a three months’ continuance of the medicine the patient entirely recovered.”[59]

The Polyporus laricis, the so-called Agaric of pharmacy, is a powerful but most uncertain medicine, and has been also recommended in consumption. I once administered a few grains of it in this disease, when violent pains and hypercatharsis supervened, which lasted for several hours. MM. B. Lagrange and Braconnot found it to contain a large quantity of an acrid resin, to which it no doubt owes its hypercathartic properties. To judge from this single case, which, however, tallies with the experience of others, I should say that this fungus was, in medicine, to be looked upon as a very suspicious ally.[60] The A. muscarius has also been used in medicine. Whistling, so long ago as 1778, wrote on its healing virtues, in Latin, recommending its powder as a valuable application with which to sprinkle sanious sores and excoriated nipples. Plenck gave drachm doses of it internally in epilepsy, and, together with Bernhard and Whistling, attests its success. It appears that the Phallus mucus in China, and the Lycoperdon carcinomale near the Cape of Good Hope, are used also by the inhabitants of those countries as external applications for cancerous sores. The Phallus, rubbed upon the skin, is said to deaden its sensibility, like the narke, or electric skate.

FUNGUSES CONSIDERED AS AN ARTICLE OF DIET.

If all the good things ever said about the stomach since the days of Menenius Agrippa, or before his time, could be collected, they would doubtless form an interesting volume; Aretæus has somewhere quaintly, but not unaptly, called it the “house of Plato;” in another place he speaks of it as the “seat” (as if κατ’ ἐξοχὴν) “of pleasure and of pain;” and so it is indeed, and it has moreover a notorious tendency, when provoked, to cool our charity and to heat our blood; its sympathies by nervous attachments, both of “continuity” and of “contiguity,”[61] with the other organs of the body, are extensive and complicated; no wonder then that it should have enlisted ours in its behalf, and that few of us would offend it wittingly, though by indiscretions we do offend it continually.

In the “sensual philosophy,” of the French school particularly, the stomach has received marked attention, ranking in that country as the most noble of the viscera.[62] Even in those republican times when no other rights were held sacred throughout France, the privileges of the stomach were respected; when men found that they might get on quite as well, or better, with a bad heart, but that they could not get on so well without a good digestion, it is not so much to be wondered at if they made idols of their bellies, established a School of Cooks to rival the School of Athens, and became famous for “those charming little suppers in which they used to set the decencies of life at defiance.”[63] But if in France far too much attention has been paid to the culinary art, too little attention has surely been paid to it at home; for the art of cookery, properly understood, is not only the art of pleasing the palate, but the stomach also.[64] In France, the dinner is the thought of the morning, and sometimes the business of the day, but in France everybody dines; in England, where the word ‘dinner’ never occurs till it is announced, a few wealthy men dine well, the middling ranks badly, and the poor not at all. Not that even the poorer orders generally want the necessary materials for such repast; they frequently consume more butcher’s meat than is consumed by their Continental neighbours; it is simply that they want skill in preparing it. If it be scanty, they cannot tell how to make the most of it; if it be homely, they cannot tell how to improve its flavour by uniting and blending with it a certain class of inexpensive luxuries, which, though they grow everywhere throughout the country, are everywhere neglected. Touching the wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of these, I have now a few words to address to the common-sense reader; that is, to him who prefers feasting upon funguses to fasting out of mere prejudice. Formerly men used to refer such questions as this to their physician; they would

“Try what Mead or Cheselden advised.”[65]

intending, perhaps, to take some little poetical license with it afterwards. Abernethy, on the anecdote of the oysters and oyster-shells being duly substantiated, would have been ostracized from polite society in those days of decorous etiquette, when, as medical men affected to be more dientereumatic with the insides of their patients than any of us now pretend to be, they must needs have been far more affable when consulted on such cases than we of the present day might be; though they did not therefore always answer the same question in the same way; one, for instance, “Le médecin Tant Pis,” would frequently proscribe the very things that his rival, “Le médecin Tant Mieux,” had just been recommending. When men came to find they must either give up some favourite article of food or else give up the anathema pronounced against it, they generally preferred the latter course, and were sure, to use a medical phrase, to “do well” if they did so; whilst a few wretched hypochondriacs, adopting the other alternative, and living strictly en régime, became only the more hypochondriacal for their pains.

None but a determined theorist[66] would nowadays think of prescribing diet for the stomach of a single patient, far less for all those of a polygastric public; neither does an enlightened, self-educated public, that can read Liebig and thoroughly appreciate its own case, hold out much encouragement for such advice. The day is past without return for long-winded prose epic on indigestion; a livelier mode of dealing with the subject of non-naturals, in the shape of novels and romances, has won the public ear. Broussais’ five-act tragedy of ‘Gastro-Enteritis’[67] has received its last plaudits; already has Crabbe’s euthanasia to this class of authors attained its full accomplishment:—

“Ye tedious triflers, Truth’s destructive foes,

Ye sons of Fiction clad in stupid prose,

O’erweening teachers, who, yourselves in doubt,

Light up false fires and send us far about,

Long may the spider round your pages spin,

Subtle and slow, her emblematic gin.

Buried in dust and lost in silence dwell,

Most potent, dull, and reverend friends, farewell!”

No article of diet was ever half so roughly handled as the fungus. What diatribes against it might be cited from the works of Athenæus, Dioscorides, Galen, Pliny, the Arabian physicians, and all their commentators! What terrible recitals, too, of poisoning from some few species have been industriously circulated, and the unfavourable inference drawn from these, been applied to the whole tribe—a mistake which some writers, even in modern times, have perpetuated. Thus, Kirker votes the whole “a family of malignants;”[68] thus too Allen and Batarra pen unsolicited apages,[69] and warn us, in an especial manner, to beware of them; while Scopoli includes in his very definition of a fungus, that it is of a class of plants which are always to be suspected, and which are for the most part poisonous. Tertullian, with more of epigram than of truth, makes out, that for every different hue they display there is a pain to correspond to it, and just so many modes of death as there are distinct species;[70] to all which, and a great deal more similar rhapsody and invective, tens of thousands of our Continental neighbours in the daily habit of eating nothing else but funguses might reply, in the words of Plautus—

“Adeone me fuisse fungum ut qui illis crederem?”

Those who abuse funguses generally do so from prejudice rather than from personal experience, objecting to their flesh as being heavy of digestion, and to their juices as being more or less prejudicial to health. Some say they are too rich, others of too heating a character. These objections are for the most part without foundation, as those who eat them can abundantly testify. To quote the authority of one or two medical friends on the Continent, formed on large personal experience, in favour of the excellence of this diet, Professors Puccinelli of Lucca, Briganti of Naples, Sanguinetti of Rome, Ottaviani of Urbino, Viviani of Genoa, are all consumers of funguses. Vittadini, whose excellent work on the esculent kinds of Italy is without a rival, himself eats, and gives us ample receipts for dressing them. In France, a similar service has been rendered to the public by Paulet, Persoon, Cordier, and Roques,[71] who have severally published excellent treatises on the various kinds fit for food, as they occur in the different provinces; whilst the influence of the last winter has been the means of introducing several new species into the Parisian markets, thus causing them to be very generally known. Not to multiply individual testimony needlessly, let that of Schwægrichen suffice, who tells us, that on seeing the peasants about Nuremberg eating raw mushrooms,[72] he too, for several weeks, restricted himself entirely to this diet, “eating with them nothing but bread, and drinking nothing but water, when, instead of finding his health impaired, he rather experienced an increase of strength.” Vegetior evasit! as the inscription at Rome relates to have been the case with St. John when he emerged, after one hour’s cooking, from a caldron of boiling oil. In a word, that which has been the daily bread of nations—the poor man’s manna—for many centuries, cannot be an unwholesome, much less a dangerous food.[73] Funguses, no doubt, are a rich and dainty fare; and so whatever objections apply to made-dishes in genere may apply also to these, which, while they contain all the sapid and nutritious constituents of animal food, have however an advantage over it—viz. that while they are as rich in gravy as any butcher’s meat, their texture is more tender, and their specific gravity less. Touching the general question as to the wholesomeness of made-dishes, it might perhaps be stated as a rule, to which there are many exceptions, that the more we vary and combine food, the better chance there is of our digesting it.[74] “You must assist nature,” Hippocrates says, “by art. You must vary your viands and your drinks. Music would tire if it were always to the same tune, so also does a monotonous regimen tire.[75] Cooks therefore make mixed dishes, and he who should always make the same dish would deservedly pass for not being a cook at all.”[76] And though Sydenham, in apparent discordance with this, recommends one dish for dinner, it is quite for another reason. Plain food may indeed suit some stomachs, but good cooking suits all stomachs; and when Seneca writes, that “there are as many diseases as cooks,” Roques takes him up properly by replying, “Yes; as bad cooks.” The rule for every dinner, plain or compound, is to dress it well—“that which is best administered is best;” and good cooking, thus understood as the art of improving and of making the most of a thing, is a matter of equal importance to both rich and poor. It is a safe rule, I believe, and one recommended on good authority too, if men wanted authority on such matter, to eat what they like, but not as much of it as they like.[77] Nine-tenths of dyspeptics become so from overfeeding. “Nauseosa satietas non ex crassis et pravis solum, sed etiam boni succi alimentis provenit.” Even Paracelsus, though an undoubted quack, might give some people a hint: “Dosis sola facit ut venenum sit vel non; cibus enim vel potus qualibet quantitate majore æquo assumtus venenum fit.” Dyspeptics are willing to enlist your sympathies in their behalf by telling of the delicacy of their mucous membrane, just as young countesses descant with more success on the extreme susceptibility of their nerves; nor is it always kindly received, if a well-wisher should remind them that their sufferings may not after all have been the fault either of their stomach or of the dish which they blame, but of their own indiscreet use of both. Whilst it is an acknowledged fact on all hands that infants are overfed, and that all children overfeed, men are by no means so prone or willing to admit that gluttony is perhaps the very last of childish things that they are in the habit of putting away from them. Thus, then, though funguses are not to be considered unwholesome, they are, like other good things, to be eaten with discretion and not à discrétion. “If you live an indolent life, are a sybarite in your heart, or should some violent passions (choler, jealousy, or revenge) be dealing with you, take care in such a case how you eat ragouts of truffles or of mushrooms; but if, on the contrary, your health be good, your life temperately prudent, your temper even, and your mind serene, then (provided you like them) you may eat of these luxuries without the slightest apprehension of their disagreeing with you.” M. Roques adds, and with truth, “it is the wine, surcharged with alcohol, of which men drink largely, in order, as they say, to relish and digest their mushrooms and made-dishes, that disagrees with the stomach, and that will, ere long, produce those visceral obstructions, and those nephritic ailments, at once so grievous to bear and so difficult to get rid of.”[78] If the reader shall retain one word of the following homely lines, and that word the last, so as to remember it in place, he will owe us no fee, and it will save him many a bitter draught:—

Lies the last meal all undigested still?

Does chyle impure your poisoned lacteals fill?

Does Gastrodynia’s tiny gimlet bore,

Where the crude load obstructs the rigid door?

Or does the fiery heartburn flay your throat?

Do darkling specks before your eyeballs float?

Do fancied sounds invade your startled ear?

Does the stopt heart oft wake to pulseless fear?

Your days all listless, and your nights all dream,

Of Pustule, Ecchymose, and Emphyseme;

Till ruthless surgeon shall your paunch explore,

And mark each spot with mischief mottled o’er;

Does all you suffer quite surpass belief?

Has oft-tried soda ceased to give relief?

Has bismuth failed, nor tonics eased your pain?

Have Chambers, Watson, both been teased in vain?

In case so cross—what cure?—but one: Refrain!

But the objection against funguses is generally of another kind: many persons who like good living too well to be afraid of the new introduction of a luxury which is to bring new dyspepsias for them in consequence, fear lest, whilst indulging in this “celestial manna,” this βρῶμα θεῶν, they should meet with the fate of the Emperor Claudius, and prefer remaining vivi to the chance of becoming divi before their time. Now there is really no just ground for this fear; the esculent fungus never becomes poisonous, nor, conversely, the poisonous variety fit to eat. In Claudius’s particular case we must remember that Locusta medicated, and Agrippina cooked, that celebrated dish, in which the mushrooms, after all, were but the vehicle for the poison. As to the general fact, though cultivation undoubtedly produces considerable changes in the qualities of this, as in those of other classes of plants, they are never of such a kind as to convert that which is esculent in one locality into a dangerous food in another. “Cœlum non animum mutat;” οὐ γὰρ τὸν τρόπον ἀλλὰ τὸν τόπον μόνον μετήλλαξα.[79] That the mushroom is not quite so wholesome when cultivated as it is in the meadow,[80] in a state of nature, cannot be doubted;[81] and that many persons have suffered, both in France and England, more or less gastric disturbance after eating those taken from hotbeds or from dark foul unaerated places, is certain; that mushrooms also in decay, when chemistry has laid hold of their tissues and changed their juices, have produced disagreeable sensations in the stomach and bowels, is not to be questioned; finally, that the idiosyncrasy of some persons is opposed to this diet, as that of others is to shell-fish, to melons, cucumbers, and the like, must also be ceded: but none of these admissions surely meddle with the question, nor go any way towards proving the assumed fact, viz. that a mushroom ever changes its nature and becomes poisonous like the toadstool.[82] It has been unwarily asserted, that because the people of the north are in the habit of employing in their kitchen the Agaricus muscarius, which is known to be poisonous in the south, this points to some remarkable difference in the plant depending on difference of locality. It is to be recollected, however, that this very same fungus, if taken in sufficient quantity, without the precaution usually adopted of soaking it in vinegar before cooking, has produced fatal accidents, of which we read the recitals in various mycological works; and only not more frequently because the plant, being generally well steeped in brine or acetic acid, is in most cases robbed of deleterious principles, the only residue left being pure fungine, which is equally innoxious and the same in all funguses whatever. It is moreover worthy of remark, that though the common mushroom (Ag. campestris) varies considerably both as to flavour and wholesomeness (circumstances attributable in part to the varieties of soil in which it flourishes[83]), other funguses, on the contrary, being mostly restricted for their alimentation and reproduction to some one particular habitat, do not present such differences. The Boletus edulis, the Fistulina hepatica, the Agaricus oreades, the Ag. procerus, the Ag. prunulus, the Ag. fusipes, the Cantharellus cibarius, etc., are, in flavour and other sensible qualities, just the same in England as they are in France, Switzerland, or Italy. Thus the objection to eat funguses on the ground of their presenting differences depending on those of the locality where they grow, applies principally, if it applies at all, to the English mushroom, of which no housekeeper is afraid, and by no means to those species the introduction of which into our markets and kitchens forms the main object of this treatise.

Besides the foregoing objections to funguses on the general ground of their supposed indigestibility, or else the more particular one of their not being at all times and in all places the same, a further and weightier one, as it is commonly urged, is the alleged impossibility of our being able to discriminate, with certainty, the good from the bad; an objection which derives much of its supposed weight from the apparently clashing testimonies of authors respecting the same species, who not unfrequently describe, under a common name, a fungus which some of them assert to be esculent, some doubtful, and others altogether poisonous in its qualities. Such discrepancies, however, have already in many cases been satisfactorily adjusted, whilst a more minute attention and corresponding improvement in the pictorial representation of species is daily diminishing the errors of the older mycologists.

Admitting then, what there is no gainsaying, the existence of many dangerous individuals in this family,[84] ought we not, in a matter of such importance, rather to apply ourselves to the task of discriminating them accurately[85] than permit idle rumours of its impracticability, or even its real difficulty, to dehort us from the undertaking? Assuredly nature, who has given to brutes an instinct, by which to select their aliment, has not left man without a discriminative power to do the same with equal certainty; nor does he use his privileges to their full, or employ his senses as he might, when he suffers himself to be surpassed by brute animals in their diagnosis of food.

MODES OF DISTINGUISHING.

The first thing to know about funguses is, that in the immense majority of cases they are harmless; the innoxious and esculent kinds are the rule, the poisonous the exceptions to it; in a general way, it is more easy to say what we should not eat than what we may; we should never eat any that smell sickly or poisonous. Opinions respecting the agreeableness or disagreeableness of an odour, as of a taste, may differ; thus, in France and Italy (where the palate seems to us to bribe the judgment of the nose), it is usual to speak of that of the Ag. prunulus as “perfuming the air;”[86] but though the strong peculiar smell exhaled by this and some other esculent funguses is anything but a perfume, as we apprehend the term, it is very different from that intolerable fœtor, that nauseous overwhelming odour given out by the Phallus impudicus, the Clathrus cancellatus, the Amanita verna, and its varieties. There are some indeed which, yielding no smell, will poison notwithstanding; but then there are none to lure us into a false security by a deceitful fragrance. The same negative indications are furnished by the palate as by the nose; those that are bitter, or styptic, or that burn the fauces on mastication, or that parch the throat when they have been swallowed, should be put aside; those that yield spiced milk, of whatever colour, should be held, notwithstanding exceptions, in suspicion, as an unsafe dairy to deal with. The “Lucchese Goat” (Ag. piperatus) and the “Cow of the Vosges” (Ag. lactifluus aureus), though in high request in their respective localities, and really delicate themselves, are akin to others whose milks, though they may have the colour of gold, have the qualities of gamboge.

“——Nescius auræ

Fallacis,

Qui nunc te fruitur credulus aurea!”

Paulet was once so indiscreet as to eat a slice of the Griper (Ag. torminosus), which belongs to this genus, and afterwards still more indiscreet in giving it the inviting name of “Mouton zoné;” it is well, however, that the reader should be apprised, as he will frequently come across this ‘mouton’ in his walks, that it is a perfect wolf in sheep’s clothing, nor less to be avoided than one nearly allied to it, which rejoices in the name of necator, or the slayer.[87] Here, as it is a safe rule rather to condemn many that may be innocent than to admit one that is at all suspicious to our confidence, we should, till intimacy has made us familiar with the exceptions, avoid all those the flesh of which is livid, or that, chameleon-like, assume a variety of hues on being broken or bruised.[88] The external colour furnishes no certain information—with the single exception of that of the gills in one or two Agarics—by which to know the good from the bad; thus, the “Boule de Neige” and the Vernal Amanite are both white; but the dress, in one case, is of innocence, in the other of mere hypocrisy; again, the green, which we are so cautioned to avoid in this class of plants as chlorotic and unhealthy, and which is of such bad augury in Amanita viridis, is quite the contrary in the Verdette (Ag. virescens). So that to be led only by colour would certainly be to be misled—a mistake which, in the family of the Russulæ, might readily compromise life.

Some mycologists recommend, with certain exceptions, the avoidance of such Agarics as have lateral stalks, of such as are pectinate (i. e. have equal gills, like a comb), of such as have little flesh in proportion to the depth of their gills, and generally, of all those that are past their prime. Some warn us not to eat after the snail, as we are in the habit of doing in our gardens after the wasp; we may trust, it seems, to him to point out the best greengages, but not to the slug to select our mushrooms for us. Finally, it has been very currently affirmed, though I think without sufficient warrant, that all such funguses as run rapidly into deliquescence ought to be avoided as dangerous. Here, while it might be unsafe to lay down any positive rule beyond one’s own experience, this, so far as it goes, would rather lead me to a different inference; and even the reader will ask—Does not the mushroom deliquesce, and is not ketchup, that “poignant liquor made from boiled mushrooms mixed with salt,”[89] to which we are all so partial, this very deliquescence? But, besides this, the Ag. comatus, which is highly deliquescent, is largely eaten about Lucca; the Ag. atramentarius also is, on our own authority, periculo ventris nostri, as good for ketchup as for that purpose to which its juices are more commonly put, viz. for making ink. Thus, amongst deliquescent Agarics, there are some the juices of which are both safe and savoury, perhaps of more than those here recorded; but as I have not hitherto myself made trial of any others, and as there are some dangerous species mixed up with this group, the public cannot be too much cautioned against making any rash experiment, where the consequences of a mistake might be so serious.

Some trees give origin by preference to good, others to deleterious species; thus, the hazel-nut, the black and perhaps the white poplar, together with the fig-tree, grow only good sorts; whereas the olive has been famous, since the days of Nicander, for none but poisonous species.

“The rank in smell, and those of livid show,

All that at roots of oak[90] or olive grow,

Touch not! But those upon the fig-tree’s rind

Securely pluck—a safe and savoury kind!”

The elm, the alder, the larch, the beech, and some other trees, seem capable of supporting both good and bad species at their roots; hence it is not safe to trust implicitly to the tree to determine the wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of the fungus that grows out of it, or in its neighbourhood. The presence of a free acid is by no means conclusive either way, there being many species of both good and bad, which will indifferently turn litmus-paper red. The old and very general practice adopted by cooks of dressing funguses with a silver spoon (which is supposed to become tarnished, then, only when their juices are of a deleterious quality), is an error which cannot be too generally known and exposed, as many lives, especially on the Continent, have been, and still are, sacrificed to it annually. In some cases the kitchen-fire will extract the deleterious property from the funguses, which it would have been unsafe to eat raw, and frequently the acrid lactescent kinds change their nature entirely and become mild by cooking; in other cases, the virus is drawn out by saturating the fungus, sometimes before dressing it, either in vinegar or brine,[91] the liquid then containing the poison which was originally in the plant; but in other species, as in Ag. emeticus, it would seem from the experiments of M. Krapf, of Vienna, upon living animals, that it is to be extracted neither by ebullition nor desiccation.[92]

The effects produced by the poison of mushrooms are exceedingly various, that is to say, the virus itself differs in different species, both as to kind and, where that is the same, as to the degree of its concentration; it is generally, however, of the class called acro-narcotic, producing inflammatory affections of the intestines, and exerting a deleterious influence over the whole nervous system. In cases where only a very small quantity has been taken experimentally, a constriction of the fauces has followed, and continued for a period varying from some minutes to several hours, occasioning, or not, nausea, heat, and, in some instances, even pain of the stomach; “sometimes the affection is entirely confined to the head, and a stupor or light delirium succeeds the eating of some species, and continues for two or three days.”[93] Not unfrequently, as in those cases cited by Larber, the symptoms have been altogether those of cholera, without any cerebral disturbance whatever; but in other instances that have come to my knowledge, during a several years’ residence on the Continent, these have been of a mixed character,[94] in which both the head and viscera have participated; and the autopsies after death have, in accordance with the symptoms, shown the stomach and intestines more or less disorganized with the products of inflammation, together with a congested state of the brain or of its investments, or a local or general softening of its substance.[95] The poison, as has been said, exists in very different degrees of intensity in different species. In some, as the Amanita verna, a few grains of the fresh fungus suffice to kill a dog;[96] while the Agaricus muscarius, though equally fatal in sufficient quantities, is not nearly so strong. Some time in general elapses from the swallowing the poison to that in which its deleterious workings first begin to be felt. I have heard of cases (similar to those cited in the last note) of persons who had supped overnight on the meal that was to prove their last, who have slept, risen next morning, gone to work, and continued working for hours, before they have been made aware of their condition. When, however, the symptoms have once set in, they become rapidly more and more alarming, while the chances of arresting or mitigating their excruciating severity lessen every minute. As the evils to be apprehended from the agency of these plants can only be prevented by their instant evacuation, to assist the disposition to vomit, or, if called in early enough, to anticipate it by the milder emetics in sufficient doses (surely not by strong ones, as some have recommended!), and, when the stomach has been thoroughly evacuated, to relieve the violence of the pain by bland mucilaginous drinks, with opiates, are the indications plainly pointed out, and the means by which inflammation and subsequent sphacelus of the gut, as well as the deleterious effects produced on the nervous system by the absorption of the poison into it, have been occasionally averted; but should symptoms of great depression be already present (as too frequently happens before the medical man arrives), he will endeavour, in that case, to rally the vital powers (scanty though the chances of success will then be) by small and repeated doses of sulphuric ether and ammonia combined, or should head symptoms require his interference, he must in that case bleed.

CONDITIONS NECESSARY TO THEIR GROWTH.

Of these, in fact, we know but little, and in the great majority of instances absolutely nothing; in a few cases moisture[97] and heat seem alone sufficient, even in our own hands, to cause some of them to grow; in others, electricity appears indispensable. A wet autumn is generally found to be exceedingly prolific in these plants, with the following notable difference as to kind: all those that are parasitical on trees show themselves, during a wet season, in amount directly varying with that of the previous rain, irrespective of any other influences conspiring to give this effect; whilst those, on the other hand, which issue from the earth, when the surface of this has been long chilled or when the electrical state of the air has not been materially modified for some time, will be found to come up sparingly or not at all, whatever rain may have fallen. An exception to this rule occurs in the common mushroom, which, by the combination of certain degrees of heat and moisture, may be reared throughout the year without the co-operation of electricity. A variety of plans have been recommended for this purpose, many of which are both troublesome and expensive; the following, taken by M. Roques from a scientific work on gardening, and said to be infallible, has, if so, the great advantage of extreme simplicity to recommend it:—“Having observed that all those dunghills which abounded chiefly in sheep- or cow-droppings, began shortly to turn mouldy on their surface and to bear mushrooms, I collected a quantity of this manure, which, so soon as it began to turn white, I strewed lightly over some melon-beds and some spring crops of vegetables, and obtained in either case, and as often as I repeated the experiment, a ready supply of excellent mushrooms, which came up from a month to six weeks after the dung had been so disposed of; but as an equable temperature is in all cases desirable to render the result certain, where this cannot be secured under the protection of glass, the next best plan is to scatter a portion of the above dungs mixed with a little earth in a cave or cellar, to which some tan is an excellent addition; for tan, though it kills other vegetable growths, has quite an opposite effect on funguses.”

Next to the common mushroom, in regard to the success attending its cultivation, comes that of the Pietra funghaia, a plant unknown to Clusius, but described by Mathiolus and Imperato, under the name of the ‘stony fungus.’ Cesalpinus has added to their accounts, directions for procuring it the whole year through, which, he says, is to be done either by irrigating the soil over the site of the stone, or by transferring the Pietra funghaia with a portion of the original mould, and watering it in our own garden. Porta adds, that the funguses take seven days to come to perfection, and may be gathered from the naked block (where this has been properly moistened) six times a year; but in preference to merely watering the blocks, he recommends that a light covering of garden mould should be first thrown over them. The Pietra funghaia, though its range of territory be extremely small, lies embedded in a variety of soils, in consequence of which its Polyporus, like our own mushroom, is very various in flavour, depending on the kind of humus in which its matrix happens to be placed. Those that grow on the high grounds above Sorrento, and on the sides of Vesuvius, are in less esteem than such as are brought into the Naples market from the mountains of Apulia.[98]

A third fungus, which we have the means of producing ad libitum, is that which sprouts from the pollard head of the black poplar;[99] these heads it is usual to remove at the latter end of autumn, as soon as the vintage is over, and their marriage with the vine is annulled; hundreds of such heads are then cut and transported to different parts; they are abundantly watered during the first month, and in a short time produce that truly delicious fungus, Agaricus caudicinus, the Pioppini, which, during the autumn of the year, make the greatest show in many of the Italian market-places. These pollard blocks continue to bear, for from twelve to fourteen years; I saw a row of them in the botanic garden at Naples, which, after this period, were still productive, though less frequently, and of fewer Agarics at a crop. The practice of rearing funguses from the poplar is not modern; Dioscorides knew, for he tells us that if we “bark the white or black poplar, cutting the bark into pieces and covering it with horse-dung, an excellent kind of fungus will spring up, and continue to bear throughout the year:” by way of comment to which passage Mathiolus adds, that a little leaven[100] will produce an abundant crop in four days. Another fungus, which I have myself reared (Polyporus avellanus), is to be procured by singeing over a handful of straw a block of the cob-nut tree, which is then to be watered and put by. In about a month the funguses make their appearance, which are quite white, of from two to three inches in diameter, and excellent to eat; while their profusion is sometimes so great, as entirely to hide the wood from which they spring.[101] Dr. Thore says, that in the Landes, the Boletus edulis and Ag. procerus are constantly raised by the inhabitants of that district, from a watery infusion of the said plants; that something more than this, however, is necessary, seems certain, since during the two or three years during which I frequented the baths of Lucca, and was in the habit of using infusions of these and a variety of other funguses, often throwing them over the very spots where each kind grew, my experiments never succeeded. Nor was Dr. Puccinelli, of Lucca, who repeated similar experiments in the botanic garden there, much more successful. Briganti, of Naples, told me much the same story; and Sanguinetti at Rome was equally unsuccessful with Ottaviani at Urbino. On making inquiry of friends in England who have attempted to propagate different kinds of funguses, either by infusion or otherwise, their attempts generally failed. My friend Mrs. Hussey, in particular, acquaints me that she has been in the habit of subjecting many plants to a like experiment, and with similar want of result. Lastly, as concerning truffles, Mr. Bornholtz has given directions how to rear them, which, as they are exceedingly expensive and troublesome, must needs be infallible to secure proselytes, even among the most sworn amateurs of these delicacies. “Prepare your ground,” says he, “with oak leaves in decay; you must also mix some iron with it and take care to make it of a proper consistence, either by adding sand, should it be too compact, or clay, should it be of too light a nature; having then with great care transplanted your truffles, (which must be properly packed with a quantity of the original mould about them,) they are to be placed tenderly in the new settlement, covered over lightly with mould, and this again is to be covered with boughs of oak and Carpinus Betulus to protect the deposit from molestation; neither must you consider your work completed till a sacred grove of these particular trees has been planted round it, which must be done with such precaution, that while they keep the precious ground in a perpetual twilight, they must not obstruct it too much, but leave a certain free passage to the air.” After which injunctions, if they be carefully attended to, Mr. B. assures us that we can reckon, without fear of disappointment, on a dish of truffles, whenever we may want them for ourselves or our friends.

FAIRY RINGS.

We know as little of the origin of fairy-rings, as of any other phenomenon connected with the growth of funguses. These fairy-rings are of all sizes, from one and a half to thirty feet in diameter; the grass composing them is observed in spring, to be of a thicker growth than the surrounding herbage, and, in consequence of the manure afforded by the crop of last year, is of a darker colour. Within these rings are frequently seen certain varieties of this class of plants, very generally Agarics, though puff-balls frequently, and occasionally the Boletus subtomentosus, affect a similar mode of growth. Of the Agarics which appear in these circles, some of the principal are Agaricus oreades, Ag. prunulus, Ag. Orcella, Ag. Georgii, Ag. personatus, and Ag. campestris. As all these feed at the expense of the grass, (by exhausting the ground that would otherwise have furnished it with the necessary supplies,) the richest vegetation in the field is generally the first to become seared. These rings (giving birth to some one species which, dying, is not unfrequently succeeded by another a little later, and this perhaps by a third, in the same order of occurrence) continue to enlarge their boundaries for a long but indefinite period.

It seems not easy to determine precisely, to the operation of what cause or causes the increase in the size of these circles from year to year should be attributed. Is it the projectile force with which the spores are disseminated all round, that has carried them so uniformly beyond the margin of the last ring as to form a concentric circle for the next of larger diameter beyond? Or is the cause to be sought underground, in the general spread of the spawn of last year in all directions outwards, but only fertile in a concentric ring beyond the site of the last crop, which had already exhausted the ground, and so rendered it incapable of supporting any new vegetable life? Or do both these causes conspire in this result? The quantity of spawn and of the spores necessarily contained in it, and the depth to which they penetrate under the surface of the soil, renders the possibility of their spreading in the latter way easily conceivable.[102]

ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF FUNGUSES.

“Ins Innre der Natur dringt kein erschaffner Geist,

Zu glücklich wem sie nur die äussre Schale lösst.”—Haller.

It would be an insult to the reader’s understanding, and a most idle waste of his time, to attempt to confute such self-destroying dogmas as those of “spontaneous” or of “equivocal” generation, which last is only a clumsy équivoque expressive of the same thing: we might just as well talk of the pendulum of a clock generating the time and space in which it librated, as of dead matter spontaneously quickening and actuating those new movements of which some of its particles have become the seat; for how, in the name of common sense, can that which we assume to be dead, i. e. emphatically and totally without life, convey such purely vital phenomena as those of intus-susception and growth, which by the very supposition are no longer within itself? Life, on such an hypothesis as this, ceases to be the opposite and antagonist principle to death, of which it then becomes but a different mode and a new phasis. It is not the incomprehensibility of such a notion (be it well understood) against which the objection lies, for as life begins and ends in mystery, that would be no objection; it lies in the rashness of attempting to solve an admitted mystery, by placing a palpable absurdity in its room; vainly and irreverently arrogating to itself the honours of a discovery which we are to believe if we can! At this rate, addled eggs, abandoned by the vital principle, might take to hatching themselves! A more legitimate and very interesting subject for inquiry is, whether those funguses which are parasitical (i. e. derive their support from the structures whence they emanate) are so many separate constituents of a superior life under analysis, or each of itself a new individual? In support of the first view, it is urged that since reproduction in such lower existences is nothing but a modification of nutrition, a new process might well originate from its perversion, and thus give rise to new products; and just as the change in the ordinary nutrition of our bodily organs is prone to give birth to various local disorganizations or morbid growths, such, it is argued, might be the origin of fungoid growth on trees. But then comes the difficulty: such a view does not, and plainly cannot, explain the development of the not parasitical kinds, of which the origin should be the same; no, nor even of all that live by suction at the expense of other plants, since there are as many kinds which quicken in dead and decaying structures, as there are that issue out of decrepit and living ones; here, then, it is plain that perverted nutrition can have nothing to do with their production, for in this case nutrition has, by the supposition, ceased; and to talk of disease after death would be a strange figure of speech indeed! An elm or oak is frequently dead five, seldom less than three, years before these parasitical growths make their appearance, from which it would appear to follow that seeds are not developed by, but that they must be extraneous to, and independent of, any pathological relation of the plant from which they grow. If then fungus life be not to be sought for, and cannot with propriety be said to originate in any morbid conditions of the tissues from which they spring, whence do they derive life—in other words, whence in every instance comes that particular seed which, when quickened, is to produce after its kind? Lies this dormant for a season in those dead and decaying tissues, which a little later the plant originating from it is destined to embellish; or is the living germ first brought to them by the winds, and merely deposited on their surface, as in a fitting nidus on which their future development is to be effected? Some writers take one view, some another. Many believe the seeds of funguses to come directly from the earth,[103] and to be drawn up with the sap, which, as it penetrates throughout the tissues of the plant, must carry the seeds also along with it. That such is actually sometimes the case is certain, since we can not only plant parasitical blights of a particular kind so as to infect particular plants, but may also by digging a trench between those that have already become diseased, and those that are still healthy, stay the progress of the blight—thus clearly establishing not only the fact of seeds, but also the highly interesting additional one, of their ascent into the structures of plants by intus-susception; and to arrive at a general view from these particular cases, this would seem to be the usual mode of their propagation. Neither does it make against this view nor is it more in favour of the other, which supposes the germs to be derived primarily from the air, and to be thence precipitated on the structures where they grow, that funguses are found on organizations in decay, on withered boughs, and on seared leaves, out of which all sap must of course have been long ago exsiccated; for what then? though the sap does, the seeds do not, evaporate with it. These, once absorbed and diffused during the lifetime of the plant throughout its whole economy, remain there in a state of potential activity, ready to burst forth and germinate whenever the necessary conditions for these wonderful changes shall be presented to them, just as though the seeds of corn now flourishing in different parts of England, had first existed for some thousand years as mummy wheat, potentially and unquickened. Nothing perishes in nature: “destructio unius matrix alterius;” life may change titles, but never becomes extinct; so soon as the more perfect plant dies, a host of other vegetable existences, hitherto enthralled by laws of an organization superior to their own, now that the connection has been dissevered, put forth their separate energies, and severally assert their independence. The poplar may have perished, root, stem, and branch, but its extinction is only the signal for other existences, which had been heretofore bound up and hid within its own, to assert themselves; and accordingly a Polyporus sprouts out here; here a Thelephora embellishes the dead bark; and here an Agaric springs out of the decaying fibres of its head: these in turn also decay, but as they moulder away they languish into a new kind of fungous life, of an inferior type to the last, as if their own vitality were inferior in kind to that of the decayed poplar, whence they lately issued.[104] Thus, since the seeds of funguses actually exist in great quantity in other plants, and since they occur in the closed interior of fruits and in corollas which are still in their envelopes (in either case out of the reach of the external air); since finally, the Pietra funghaia, which produces a Polyporus unknown to England, may be, notwithstanding, made to germinate in England by furnishing the stone with adequate supplies of water and of heat, that seems the more tenable hypothesis of the two, which, in every case, supposes the nidus of the fungus to furnish the seed, and the atmosphere, the conditions necessary for its quickening. How the seed is first made to quicken is another and most interesting question, still evolved in mystery. As there is no ocular evidence to be obtained of the usual organs of sex, some mycologists have separated funguses from the family of the clandestinely married Cryptogamia, to place them with the Agamia, which repudiate the marriage tie;[105] but as every argument from ignorance is unsafe, (and such would appear to be particularly the case here, when we consider how many things undoubtedly exist, which the imperfection of lenses and the circumscribed power of the eye prevent our seeing,) we should rather make use of what is displayed to us in the economy of other plants, in the way of analogy as applied to these, than deny what is likely, merely because it is not an object of sense. It would appear then, from what has been stated, that certain funguses are produced like other plants, from seeds; and more likely at least, in the parasitic kinds, that such seeds are derived by the plant which supports them from the ground, than deposited from the atmosphere. Before we proceed to the description of species, a few more words remain to be said about these spores, and a brief notice to be taken of those parts that are essential to all, and more especially of such as are characteristic of those higher forms of funguses which are the more immediate subject of the present work.

SPORES OR SEEDS.

All funguses have not seeds,—at least, seeds apparent to us;[106] but if we reflect that these, even where visible, can do no more than present to our senses the visible tabernacle of that life which is still invisible, and which, not being material, must ever elude our search,[107] then it will not appear so difficult to conceive that the apparently seedless threads of some particular moulds should include, in their interior, vital germs of some sort, which, being homogeneous with, or of the same colour as, the parenchyma of the mould itself, are invisible—just as we know them to be for a season in puff-balls, in the veins of truffles, or in the Agyrium, the receptacle of which last breaks up, when ripe, into sporidia, which then and not till then become manifest. The seeds of funguses are called spores: in the great majority of cases, the microscope, which brings their shapes under observation (for to the naked eye they appear as dust), presents them to us as round, oval, oblong, or even angular corpuscules, and, more rarely still, echinulate or with a tail. They are as various in size as in shape, the first bearing no proportion whatever to the dimensions of the future plant. They vary, too, greatly in colour, being sometimes of a pure white, and continuing so throughout the whole of their seminal existence; at other times, the white acquires a yellow tinge on drying. Some are brown, some yellow, some pink, some purple, some purple-black, and some pass successively from pink to purple, and from purple to purple-black.[108] These seeds or spores are sometimes naked, but are much more commonly shut up in little pouches or receptacles, either of a regular or of an irregular shape; the first are called thecæ, the latter sporanges; thecæ (which are in shape similar to the cases of the same name that used to receive the ancient εἱλίγματα, or scrolls) are small, cylindrical bodies, in which the seeds lie one over the other, as in a rouleau; they are themselves let into a receptacle (or that part of the fungus the office of which is to receive and support the reproductive organs) in a regular and symmetrical manner, and at length occupy it completely. Not all are prolific; for some, pressing upon others, cause them to abort, leaving wherever this happens, sterile thecæ, or paraphyses, between those that are fertile. Sporanges are little globose or turbinated receptacles, frequently furnished with a pedicle, in which the seeds lie without order, as they are themselves inserted symmetrically, or without order, into the receptacle. Sometimes these seeds are packed in series of fours, as in the fimetary Agarics; in other genera, as in the Helvellæ and Morels, they are stored away in series of eights. The spores, so soon as they are ripe, either drop out of the sporiferous membrane (hymenium), or, as more frequently happens, are projected from it with an elastic jerk, or else, as is the case of Agarics of a deliquescent kind, return to the earth mixed up with the black liquid into which these ultimately resolve themselves. Sometimes the whole external surface of the fungus is dusted with seed; but much more frequently they are restricted to some particular part, and either lie on the upper side, as in the Pezizæ, or on that which is beneath, as in the mushroom. The spores generally lie on the outside of the fungus, but in the puff-ball, as every one knows, they are internal, and in such prodigious quantity as sometimes entirely to fill its cavity. It is a speculation from Germany, that spores are capable of altering their forms, and that according to the accidents of climate or soil, they assume this or that type, and give rise at different times to different kinds of funguses; on which it is sufficient to remark, that while there is not the least foundation for such an hypothesis, there is in fact much evidence against it; nature acts by immutable laws and has no changelings. To appeal to experience, when did mushrooms ever spawn toadstools? When was the Pietra funghaia ever seen to bring forth anything but its own Polyporus? or the fig, the poplar, or the hazel (when singed and watered to render them prolific) exhibit any but their own particular mushroom? Spores are endowed, like other seeds, with an extraordinary vitality, which may lie dormant in them for an indefinite period; but unlike most other seeds, they seem capable of resisting the prolonged heat of boiling water, infused in which, and poured upon the ground, they are still capable of producing each after its kind. The specific gravity of spores is greater than that of water, as may be seen by placing a mushroom over a glass which contains it, when, falling upon the surface, they presently subside to the bottom. These spores sometimes merely multiply without any further progress in development; sometimes they proceed a certain way only, and then, the conditions necessary for their further advance failing, this is arrested; sometimes, as in the Sistotrema, the plant appears twice under a perfect form, being for part of its existence a Hydnum, and during the other half a Boletus; but, generally speaking, these minute corpuscular bodies are destined to receive an infinite variety of protean and imperfect forms, and to pass stage by stage, and step by step, to the full attainment of that ultimate one which they assume when their growth has reached its natural limits. Sometimes the spore expands outright into a puff-ball; sometimes it shoots up straight into a club, as in some of the Clavarias; or lies like a bowl, resupinate on the ground and stalkless, as in the Peziza; in other cases, it assumes the more perfect but much less simple forms of Chanterelle, Boletus, Dædalea, Morel, or Mushroom.

DEVELOPMENT OF SEEDS.

The mode in which the organs immediately containing the seeds are formed, differs according to the family. In the tribe of puff-balls, where the seed is formed in the interior of the fungus, there is no hymenium; a few of the internal cells (when the Lycoperdon has attained its full size) begin to enlarge, and these in a short time are found to contain small granules, generally of a determinate number, and moistened by a fluid secreted from within the walls. In such funguses as have an hymenium it is only some of the superficial cells, and these in a particular position in reference to the receptacle, that contain seeds; though perfect identity of structure throughout, is evinced in a conclusive manner if we invert the head of a young fungus on its stalk; for then these thecæ begin to form and to fill themselves with seed, not on the side where they were about to do so previous to this inversion of the head, but on that which was the uppermost and sterile surface, and which, now that it is the undermost, has become prolific. The expansion of a fungus, according to Vittadini, is effected as follows:—“These thecæ,” of which we have been speaking, “as they swell, become distended with the contained seed, and mostly so at their free extremity, since they have more room for expansion in that direction than at the other, which is impacted into the substance of the pileus; in consequence of this, a series of wedges are formed which, as the seed continues to distend them, force out the pileus, loosen its marginal connections with the stalk, uncurl its involuted borders, and finally open up its cells, pores, and sinuses.”[109]

In those subterranean funguses which mature their seeds below the surface of the ground, the lower portion, so soon as this is accomplished in the upper, suddenly takes to grow upwards, carrying along with it the bag, which, on reaching the surface of the ground, bursts its envelopes and scatters its prolific dust to the winds. All funguses, as has already been observed, have in all probability spores, though in a few instances, of byssoid growths, (Hyphas, Himantias, and Æthelias,) these are not apparent; in most cases too, they are attached to an hymenium, into which, or on the surface of which, they are placed till ripe. One very large tribe, by far the largest, are called Hymenomycetes, from ὑμήν, a membrane, and μύκος, a fungus; i. e. funguses with a seed membrane: to distinguish them from those other kinds, very small numerically in proportion to themselves, Gasteromycetes, in which the seeds, arranged and stored away in particular receptacles, named sporanges or thecæ, are with them included in the belly (γαστήρ) of the fungus, as is the case in truffles and puff-balls. The hymenium, like that curiously doubled-down sheet of paper which conjurors turn into so many shapes, assumes a great variety of forms; running down the gills of the mushrooms and the plaits of the Cantharellus, up into the tubes of the Boletuses; sheathing the vegetable teeth of Hydna, forming an intricate labyrinth of anastomosing plates in Dædalea; now rising into little rough eminences on the surface of the Thelephoræ, and now affording a smooth investment to that of the Clavariæ. It is covered with a veil, which disappears so soon as the spores begin to ripen, and its protection is no longer required; seen under the microscope, it appears to be wholly made up of thecæ.

SUCCESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SPORES.

When the spore is to cease to be a spore, and to become a mushroom, the first thing it does is to send forth certain cotton-like filaments, whose interfacings entangle it completely while they also serve to attach it to the place of its birth; these threads (like the spongioles attached to the roots of phænogamous plants, whose name sufficiently explains their office) absorb and bring nourishment to the quickened spore, which then maintains itself entirely by intus-susception. All this takes place before the germ has burst, or the embryo fungus begun to develope its organs. In some instances, these elementary threads are, like the ordinary roots of plants, spread out to a considerable distance underground, forming here and there in their course small bulbs or tubercles, each of which, in turn, becomes a new individual; in others, and more commonly, these spores are sprinkled about unconnectedly, as in the Pietra funghaia, affecting certain spots only, which become so many small matrices whereof each furnishes a crop. The union of many germinating granules together with their connecting threads, constitutes mushroom spawn, or, as it is technically called, carcytes.[110] Examined a short time after quickening, the spore is found to have swelled out into a fleshy kernel; which in puff-balls, truffles, and the uterine subterranean families generally, constitutes of itself the whole fungus; this only grows in size afterwards, the substance and original form remaining the same through the entire period of development. In those destined to live under the influence of air and light, this same rudimental nucleus gradually evolves new parts, and assumes, as we have seen, a vast variety of forms, (whereof each particular one is predetermined by the original bias imprinted upon every spore at its creation,) and here there is a manifest analogy with the progressive development of new parts in the higher plants. In such funguses as are wrapped up in a volva or bag, during the earliest period of growth, this furnishes them not only with the means of protection, but of nourishment also. This volva, which is formed by the mere swelling out of the original fleshy bulb, when it has grown to a certain size, exhibits towards its centre the rudiments of the young fungus; of which the receptacle appears first, and all the other parts in succession. The embryo, next taking to grow, in its turn approaches the circumference of the volva, which, having by this time ceased to expand, is burst open, and sometimes with much violence, by the emerging Amanite. As soon as the hymenium has parted with its seed, which falls from it in the form of fine dust, the fungus, collapsing, either withers on its stem, or else dissolves into a black liquid and so escapes to the earth. In such funguses as have not a volva, the basilar or primary nucleus shoots up at once in the form of a cone, and a little later presents at its apex the rudiments of a receptacle or head; by degrees, and frequently by slow degrees,[111] the perfected structures of the plant are elaborated and spread themselves out into some of the forms mentioned above, of which the clavate is the most simple, and that with gills the most complex. The primary nucleus is formed out of simple cellular membrane, the cells of which, at first elongating, and at length uniting into little bundles, assume a fibrous appearance; sometimes these fascicular bodies effuse themselves unchanged into the substance of the receptacle, in which they spread out and are lost; at others, a transverse line makes the demarcation between the pileus and stem.[112] The last part formed in a fungus, generally, is that which bears the seed; and whenever an exception to this occurs, and the seed is formed at an earlier period than usual, nature has in this case provided three membranes, to cover and protect these delicate organs till the plant shall have attained maturity: these are the ring (annulus), the veil (velum), and the wrapper (volva).

OF THE ANNULUS, THE VELUM, AND THE VOLVA.

Of these involucra the first two are partial, the other universal. The Volva is a thick membranaceous covering, originating at the base of the fungus, which it thus connects with the earth, and furnishes, during its fœtal life, with the means of support and nourishment. When this has ceased, and the plant has quitted its wrapper, if this still adhere to the base of the stalk, it is styled manifest (manifesta), but if there be no traces of it left, obliterated (obliterata). It is free when it can be easily detached, and congenital when it cannot without laceration. In funguses with bulbous roots it is congenital, in those without bulbs it is free. All funguses that have a volva are of course volvati, but as this organ exists in many only so long as they are underground, mycologists are agreed to restrict the term to such alone as retain it afterwards.

The Ring.—This, which differs considerably in form, substance, and in its attachments, is composed either of a continuous sheet of membrane or else of a number of delicately-spun threads, resembling a spider’s web,[113] which in either case passing from the margin of the pileus to the corresponding upper portion of the stem, give way as the plant expands, and either festoon for a season the margin of the cap, or encircle the stalk with a ring. The marginal remains of the Annulus are extremely fugacious, but the ring round the stalk, though generally transitory, is sometimes persistent; it is superior or descending when originating from the summit of the stem, it descends outwards and downwards to form connections with the rim of the pileus; inferior or ascending when, coming off from that portion of the stalk which is below the pileus, it ascends to attach itself to this. In a few cases the ring is partly membranaceous and partly composed of radiating arachnoid threads.

The Veil.—Some funguses not only present the ring just mentioned, their hymenium or seed membrane being further protected from harm by a second investment, the veil, Velum, the stalk origin of which, when existing in conjunction with an annulus, is below it, but when the fungus is not annulate, the velum rises higher up on the stalk, stretches across to meet and is afterwards reflected over the whole surface of the pileus; on the expansion of the Agaric this investment is entirely broken up, and exhibits those well-known flocks, which have been called by the learned verrucæ, but which, as they are generally of a dirty leprous hue, and affect more or less of a circular arrangement, have procured for this whole tribe of Amanites in Italy the uncomely epithet of tignosi, or scald-heads. Where there has been both a volva and a velum, as sometimes happens in the same fungus, these verrucæ are of different colours according as they are remnants of the first merely, or of both together.[114] The velum in the subgenus Limacium is a slimy coating adhering to the head of the fungus, which then looks as if it had been dipped in gum mucilage; this generally disappears after a time, leaving the epidermis dry, though sometimes, like the solid membranaceous veil, it is more or less persistent. The waxy covering on the pileus of the Ag. virescens, which after a time cracks and tessellates its surface, is only an exudation limited to the upper portion of the cap, and not a veil.

The Stalk.—This, which is absent in many parasitical funguses of the Order Pileati, when present, either effuses itself uninterruptedly into the substance of the pileus, which it then, in fact, forms, or else supports merely as on a pillar, a distinct line of demarcation showing where the fibres terminate. It assumes a great variety of forms, which serve in many instances to characterize species; besides which peculiarities there are others to be noted, as the mode of its insertion into the pileus, its having or not having a ring, the circumstance of its being scabrous, glossy, or tomentose, reticulated, spotted, or striped, of one colour above and another below, or of its changing colour when bruised, any of which may sometimes assist our diagnosis.

The Pileus.—By far the larger number of funguses mentioned in this work have a pileus, or cap; all such belong to the first great tribe Pileati; they include the genera Agaricus, Boletus, Cantharellus, Morchella, Hydnum, Fistulina, and Polyporus, each of which furnishes its quota of alimentary species, together with many others not esculent. The form of the pileus, like that of the stalk, is various in these different genera, besides being variable in the different species of the same genus; generally it assumes an orbicular or umbrella shape, especially in such funguses as grow solitary on the ground, whilst in others, parasitical on trees, (particularly when they have no stalk,) it is more or less of a half-hemisphere.

The Gills.—Those vertical plates on the under surface of the mushroom, which radiate from the centre to the circumference, like the spokes of a wheel, are called Gills (lamellæ); they are not formed, as some have supposed, of layers of the reduplicated seed-membrane alone, but by a prolongation of the fibres of the pileus, which these merely invest. The fibrous structure is most apparent in Agarics with thick gills; in those where the flesh changes colour when bruised; or where, the interposed flesh remaining white, the hymenium is tinged with the colour of the ripening spores. In those funguses which have little flesh the upper surface of the pileus, especially towards the circumference, is frequently furrowed with transverse sulci; these are occasioned by the sinking in of the epidermis along with the fibres of the flesh between the layers of the hymenium, and consequently their position always corresponds precisely to that occupied by the backs of the gills. The end nearest the stalk is termed posterior (postica), the opposite extremity anterior (antica); the terminations of the lesser gills take place at various distances short of the stalk, which the perfect gills reach, and down which they sometimes course or are decurrent (decurrentes); they are said to be adnate (adnatæ) when connected at their posterior end; free (liberæ) when they do not adhere; remote (remotæ) when they terminate at a certain distance from the stem; emarginate (emarginatæ) when they are obtusely notched or hollowed out posteriorly; denticulate (denticulatæ) when connected by means of a tooth; equal (æquales) when all of the same length; forked (furcatæ) and branched (ramosæ) when they divide in their course, once, or more frequently, or are connected at the sides with the imperfect gills; dedalean (dædaleæ) when they anastomose irregularly together; simple (simplices) when they are free from all connections; distant (distantes) when they are few and wide apart; close (confertæ) when they are very numerous and touch each other; serrated (serratæ) when notched like a saw; waved (undulatæ) when the margin is undulating; and imbricating (imbricatæ) when they lie one over another, like tiles.

The Tubes.—Funguses of the genus Boletus, etc., present on their under surface, in place of gills, series of small hollow cylinders or tubes; which are for the most part soldered side to side like the cells of a honeycomb, but in the Fistulina are unconnected. Like the gills, they are prolongations of the fibres of the pileus, but lined, instead of coated, by the hymenium; their free extremities are the pores, which at first are closed, but afterwards open to let the seed escape: they are generally of equal length and simple, but sometimes in the interior of a large one smaller tubes may be discerned, in which case the first is termed compound. With reference to the stalk, they are either adnate or decurrent, they first appear as a network formed by slight prominences of the fibres of the pileus; if at this early period a portion be removed together with a piece of the flesh, it is reproduced in a few days and the tubes developed as usual. The beautiful reticulations observed on the stalk of some Boletuses are produced by abortive tubes decurrent along their surface.

The Plaits: Venæ, Plicæ.—The plaits of the Chanterelle are formed like the gills and tubes of the mushroom and Boletus, i. e. by the fibres of the flesh running down from the pileus, and invested in a reduplication of the hymenium; with this difference, however, that while in the two latter the seed membrane is divided into as many portions as there are gills or tubes, in the former the continuity of its surface is perfectly unbroken. These plaits (plicæ) are always late in appearing, and sometimes are only developed when the fungus is about to cast its seed.

The Spines: Aculei, etc.—The under surface of the pileus in the genus Hydnum is shagged with vegetable spines or teeth (dentes, aculei) of unequal lengths, generally isolated, but sometimes connected at the base, and formed originally out of a congeries of minute papillæ invested by the hymenium, which gradually elongate their fibres and assume this form. Light seems essential to their production, for if a Hydnum grow in the dark, the teeth shrink up into long threads and are sterile.

METHODICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE BRITISH ESCULENT FUNGUSES.

The primary division of Funguses into Hymenomycetes and Gasteromycetes is founded upon the position of their seed, which lies, as we have seen, externally in the first, and internally in the members of the second. The funguses described in the present work belong chiefly to the first division, Hymenomycetes; to Tribe 1, Pileati; and many of them to Genus 1, Agaricus. This genus includes a great variety of species, and is distinguished from all other genera by having a fleshy pileus furnished underneath with gills, which are placed at right angles to the stem. Some species, during their infancy, are enclosed either in one or more membranes.

Division I. HYMENOMYCETES.

Tribe 1. PILEATI.

Genus 1. AGARICUS.

Old words in Natural History seldom become obsolete, but they change their meanings strangely. Were Dioscorides and Pliny redivivi, they would find nothing but misnomers! The term Agaricus, which anciently applied indiscriminately to all hard coriaceous funguses growing on trees (while the word Fungus did imperfect duty for this genus), was next arbitrarily made by Linnæus to stand representative for such only as had gills, “fungi lamellati terrestres et arborei.”[115] Persoon, again, under the name Amanita (a Galenic word, but hitherto unappropriated), made a new genus of such Agarics as were invaginated, i. e. shut up during the earlier period of their development in a volva; of such as had veins in place of gills, Merulius; and of such as had anastomosing gills formed another, Dædalea, a third division. More recently, Fries has greatly simplified the study of this very large and difficult genus by eliminating all of a coriaceous texture, and (having restored to it the genus Amanita) by then dividing the whole into sections; enabling us to arrive at an accuracy in the discrimination of species which was wholly unattainable before his time. His first grand series of Agarics comprehends those of white spores (Leucospori[116]), and of this his first section is—

Subgenus 1. Amanita.[117]

All the Agarics belonging to this subgenus are, during the immaturity of the fungus, furnished with a volva and a ring; some have a velum in addition, and in this case, the surface of the pileus is covered with warts, or verrucæ. This natural division was adopted long ago by Micheli, who gave the name Uovoli to those which had only the first two, and that of Tignosi to those that had all three. Altogether they form but a very small group, but one very important to distinguish accurately, as it includes, besides one or two very delicate species, some which are highly poisonous.

Bot. Char. Pileus at first campanulate, then plane; fleshy towards the centre, attenuated at the margin; gills ventricose, narrow behind, free, numerous, at length denticulate, the imperfect ones few, of a determinate form according to the kind, and, with one exception (that of Ag. Cæsareus), white. Stalk generally enlarged at the base, frequently bulbous, solid, or stuffed with a cotton-like substance, which is at length absorbed; ring descending, imperfect, fugacious; flesh white, unchanging.

Esculent species: Ag. vaginatus.

Of the Tignosi, that is, those with warts on their surface, some have striated margins, others are without striæ.

Esculent species: Ag. rubescens.

Subgenus 2. Lepiota.[118]

Bot. Char. Volva fugacious, veil single, universal, closely adhering to and confluent with the epidermis, when burst forming a more or less persistent ring towards the middle of the stem; stem hollow, stuffed more or less densely with fine arachnoid threads, thickened at the base, fibrillose; pileus fleshy, not compact, ovate when young, soon campanulate, then expanded and umbonate, more or less shagged with scales; flesh white, soft, sometimes changing colour; gills free, unequal, white, never decurrent.

Solitary, persistent, autumnal funguses, growing on the ground. Not dangerous.

Esculent species: Ag. procerus, Ag. excoriatus.

Subgenus 3. Armillaria.[119]

Bot. Char. Veil single, partial, forming a persistent ring, which in the unexpanded plant is joined to the margin of the pileus;[120] stem solid, firm, subfibrillose, unequal; pileus fleshy, convex, expanded, obtuse; epidermis entire, even in the scaly species, and not continuous with the fibres of the ring; flesh white and firm; gills broad, unequal, somewhat acute behind.

Esculent species: Ag. melleus (?).

Subgenus 4. Limacium.[121]

Esculent species: none.

Subgenus 5. Tricholoma.[122]

Bot. Char. Veil fibrous or floccose, fugacious; stalk generally solid, firm, fleshy, attenuated upwards, scaly, fibrillose or striate; pileus fleshy, compact, campanulate or depressed, convex; margin attenuated, at first involute, shagged with woolly fibres or lanugo; gills unequal, obtuse behind, emarginate; flesh white and unchangeable.

Esculent species: Ag. prunulus and Ag. personatus.[123]

Subgenus 6. Russula[124] (Scop.).

Bot. Char. No veil; stem smooth, equal, glabrous, strong, white, spongy within; pileus at first campanulate, then hemispherical, in age depressed, fleshy in the centre, thin at the margin, which is never reflexed at any period of growth, the epidermis bare, smooth, occasionally sticky in wet weather; gills juiceless, mostly equal, occasionally forked, the short ones few, rigid, brittle, broad in front, behind narrow, acute, properly free but apparently adnato-decurrent, from the effusion of the stem into the pileus; flesh firm, dry, white, moderately compact, brittle; sporules white or ochraceous; gills white or yellow.

Large or middle size, persistent, solitary funguses, growing on the ground.

Esculent species: Ag. heterophyllus, virescens, and ruber.

Acrid species: Ag. emeticus, sanguineus, and alutaceus.

Subgenus 7. Galorrheus.[125]

Bot. Char. No veil; stalk equal, round, solid, effused into the pileus; pileus fleshy, compact, generally umbilicate, margin even, when young involute; gills unequal, sometimes very thick, often forked, narrow, attenuated behind, brittle, connected by a prolonged tooth to the stalk, down which they are slightly decurrent; flesh firm and juicy, distilling milk.

Esculent species: Ag. deliciosus and piperatus.

Subgenus 8. Clytocybe.[126]

Bot. Char. Veil none; pileus at first convex, at length infundibuliform; gills unequal. The characteristics of this subgenus are rather negative than positive; many of the contained species vary considerably amongst themselves, but the subdivisions founded on such variations are all well marked.

Subdivision Dasyphylli.[127] Gills in close juxtaposition, decurrent or acutely adnate.

Esculent species: Ag. nebularis.

Subdivision Camarophylli.[128] Pileus subcompact, dry; gills very distant, vaulted, decurrent.

Esculent species: Ag. virgineus.

Subdivision Chondropodes.[129] Pileus tough, dry, gills nearly free, close, white, external coat of stem subcartilaginous.

Esculent species: Ag. fusipes.

Subdivision Scortei. Pileus subcoriaceous; gills free, subdistant.

Esculent species: Ag. oreades.

Subgenus 9. Collybia.[130]

Esculent species: none.

Subgenus 10. Mycena.[131]

Esculent species: none.

Subgenus 11. Omphalia.[132]

Esculent species: none.

Subgenus 12. Pleuropus.[133]

Bot. Char. Pileus unequal, eccentric or lateral; stem, when present, solid and firm; gills unequal, juiceless, unchangeable, acute behind, growing on trees or wood; for the most part innocuous, but two only generally eaten.

Esculent species: Ag. ostreatus, in the subdivision Concharia; and Ag. ulmarius, in the subdivision Ægeritaria.

Series 2. HYPORHODEUS.[134]

Sporules pale rose-colour.

Subgenus 13. Clitopilus.[135]

Bot. Char. Veil none; stem tolerably firm, subequal, distinct from the pileus; pileus fleshy, campanulate or convex, at length somewhat plane, dry, regular; gills unequal, changing colour as the fungus matures its seed, fixed, or free.

Esculent species: Ag. orcella.

Subgenus 14. Leptonia.[136]

Esculent species: none.

Subgenus 15. Nolanea.[137]

Esculent species: none.

Subgenus 16. Eccilia.[138]

Esculent species: none.

Series 3. CORTINARIA.[139]

Sporules reddish-ochre; veil arachnoid.

Subgenus 17. Telamonia.[140]

Esculent species: none.

Subgenus 18. Inoloma.[141]

Bot. Char. Veil fugacious, marginal, consisting of free arachnoid threads; stem solid, bulbous, fibrillose, more or less diffused into the pileus, fleshy; pileus fleshy, convex when young, then expanded, fibrillose, or viscid, regular, juicy; gills emarginato-adnexed, broad, changing colour; colour of the gills or pileus violet.

Large autumnal funguses growing on the ground.

Esculent species: Ag. violaceus.

Subgenus 19. Dermocybe.[142]

Bot. Char. Veil dry, arachnoid, very fugacious; stem not truly bulbous, fibrillose, stuffed when young; pileus clothed with fibrillæ, rarely with gluten; gills rather unequal, broad, close.

Esculent species: Ag. castaneus.

Series 4. DERMINUS.

[In the nine subgenera following, from 20 to 28, viz. Pholiota, Myxacium, Hebeloma, Flammula, Inocybe, Naucoria, Galera, Tapinia, and Crepidotus, there are no esculent species.]

Series 5. PRATELLA.[143]

Bot. Char. Veil not arachnoid; gills changing colour, clouded, at length dissolving; sporidia brown-purple.

Subgenus 29. Volvaria.

Esculent species: none.

Subgenus 30. Psaliota.[144]

Bot. Char. Veil forming a partial ring-like investment, more or less persistent; stalk robust, subequal, distinct from the pileus; pileus fleshy, more or less campanulate when young, almost flat when fully expanded; sometimes sticky, sometimes scaly or else fibrillose, sometimes naked; gills unequal, free, or connected with the stalk, broad and deepening in colour.

In addition to the ring, some have a very fugacious volva or velum, some both one and the other.

Esculent species: Ag. campestris and Georgii.

[In the four next subgenera, from 31 to 34, Hypholoma, Psilocybe, Psathyra, and Coprinarius, there are no esculent species.]

Subgenus 35. Coprinus.[145]

Bot. Char. Gills free, unequal, thin, simple, changing colour, at length deliquescent. Veil universal, floccose, fugacious; stem fistulose, straight, elongated, brittle, subsquamulose, whitish; pileus membranaceous, rarely subcarnose, when young ovato-conic, then campanulate, at length torn and revolute, deliquescent, distinct from the stem, clothed with the flocculose fragments of the veil.

Fugacious funguses, growing in rich dungy places or on rotten wood.

Esculent species: Ag. comatus and atramentarius.

Subgenus 36. Gomphus.

No esculent species.

Genus 2. CANTHARELLUS.[146]

Bot. Char. These are distinguished from Agarics, which at first sight they resemble, by having veins in place of gills; that is, by having the prolongations of the fibres of the pileus invested in an undivided, in place of a divided hymenium, as occurs in Agarics and in the genus Boletus. These veins are prominent, ramifying, seldom anastomosing; central, eccentric, or wanting; no investments; dust white.

Esculent species: C. cibarius.

[In the next three genera, Merulius, Schizophyllum, and Dædalea, there are no esculent species.]

Genus 6. POLYPORUS.[147]

Bot. Char. Hymenium concrete with the substance of the pileus, consisting of subrotund pores with thin simple dissepiments.

Esculent species: P. frondosus.

Genus 7. BOLETUS.[148]