The Esculent Funguses of England

Conclusion

Italy is not the country for the English florist; he will find twenty times as many petals at home. Trim parterres are not inventions of the South; summer-houses would be no luxuries in a climate that never knows winter; the only Conservatories that flourish there are not for flowers, but for music. In few northern regions is Flora worse off for a bouquet than at Rome or Naples; regarded merely as the herald of Spring and not appreciated for her own sake, as soon as she has waved her wand over the land and covered it with the March blossoms of Crocuses, Cyclamens, and Anemones, her reign is over. All scents are held in equal abhorrence save those of frankincense and garlic, for which there seems to be a prescriptive toleration; but every other odour, fetid or fragrant, musk195 or mignonette, is equally proscribed; and an Italian Signora would as soon permit a Locusta to cook for her, as a violet to scent her boudoir. To pick wild flowers is as dangerous as it is difficult to find cultivated ones; a coup de soleil or a fever is easily procured by imprudent exposure before sunset, while the interval between that and night is too brief to be employed for the purpose; but when the season for flowers is long past, and Autumn with her fruits is come round again, when the stranger can wander forth where he lists without an umbrella, he will be able to luxuriate amidst the lovely scenery, and to delight himself in the natural history of the district: the season of the periodical rains has ceased; the repose of the forest is no longer troubled by the Power of the waters; the mountain Pines borne for miles down into the valleys are stranded on the broad shingly bed of the exhausted torrent; broken bridges are safely repaired; the maize is receiving the last mellowing touches as it festoons the cottage fronts, the prickly chestnut-pods are beginning to gape and the brown chestnuts to leap out shining from their envelopes; the last reluctant olive has been beaten from the bough; the vintage has nearly ceased to bleed; night fires196 already begin to nicker on the mountains, and the hemp stubble is daily crackling on the plain. This is indeed the time for enjoying Italy; nature has revived again, and with nature, man. The feverish torpor, I had almost ventured to call it the summer hybernation, has ceased with September, and Autumn has come round with the vivifying influence of a new Spring; then if we go abroad to wander, whether our walk be across plains or through upland woods, we shall not stroll a mile without stopping a hundred times to admire what is to many of us a nearly new class of objects which have sprung up suddenly and now beset our path on every side. These are the Fungus tribe, which are as beautiful as the fairest flowers, and more useful than most fruits; and now that butchers’ meat is bad, that the beans have become stringy, and the potatoes are hydrated by the rain, they appear thus opportunely to eke out the scantiness of autumnal larders in the South and give a fresh zest to the daily repast. Well may their sudden apparition surprise us, for not ten days since the waters were all out, and only three or four nights back peals of thunder rattled against the casements and kept the most determined sleepers in awful vigil; and now—behold the meadows by natural magic studded with countless fairy-rings of every diameter, formed of such species as grow upon the ground, while the Chestnut and the Oak are teeming with a new class of fruits that had no previous blossoming, many of which have already attained their full growth. We recollect with gratitude the objects of a pursuit, which has accidentally brought us to such an acquaintance with the diversities of Italian scenery as we never should have experienced without it. In fishing, it is not the fish we catch, which alone repays us for our toil; it is the wandering as the rivulet wanders, “at its own sweet will,” the exercise and the appetite consequent upon it, the prize in natural history, the reciting aloud, or reflecting as we walk, and when it is pleasantly warm the “molles sub arbore somni,” which console us for the lack of sport. On the same principle, mushroom-hunting may be recommended to the young naturalist not only for the beauty of the objects which he is sure to come upon (if he do but hunt at the right season), but also because in that most beautiful of months, whether at home or abroad, it brings the wanderer out of beaten paths to fall in with many striking views which he would not otherwise have explored. The extremely limited time during which funguses are to be found, their fragility, their infinite diversity, their ephemeral existence, these, too, add to the interest of an autumnal walk in quest of them. At Lucca, leaving idleness and indigestion in bed, just as the sun was beginning to shoot his first rays on the white convents and the spires of the village churches on the mountains, making morning above, while the deep valley beneath was still in twilight, it was pleasant to pass the little opening coffee-house with its two or three candidates for early breakfast, and crossing the noiseless trout-stream over the little bridge, to enter one of those old chestnut-forests and begin clambering up the laddery pathway, to reach the summit just as he poured his full effulgence on the magnificent rival of the Lucchese and Modenese territories. Pleasant, too, was it on the road Romeward, pausing a few days to enjoy the exquisite scenery about Spoleto, to climb the steep streets to the cathedral, and thence, passing the giddy viaduct several hundred feet above the white ravine which it traverses, to issue upon those Nursian Hills then fragrant with the breath of morning, “le beau matin qui sort humide et pâle,” and with the scent of sweet herbs; but above all other hills renowned for the fragrance of those ever-reproductive mines of coal-black subterranean truffles! It is a pleasant remembrance to have plucked the crimson Amanite, that ministered to a Cæsar’s decease, in the very neighbourhood of the Palatine Hill; to have collected mushrooms amidst the meadows of Horace’s farm, where he tells us they grew best; and to have watched along the moist pastures of the Cremera a stand of the stately Ag. procerus nodding upon their stalks; or, standing on the heights above Sorrento, just as the setting sun flashed upon the waters of the bay ere they engulfed him, and left us to his sister the evening star, to have come upon that wonderful Polyporus tuberaster whose matrix is the hard stone, from which it derives strength and luxuriance as if from a soft and genial soil.

But not only in Italy, in our own country also, the Collector in Mycology will have to traverse much beautiful and diversified scenery; amid woods, greenswards, winding lanes, rich meadows, healthy commons, open downs, the nodding hop-grove and the mountain sheep-path; and all shone upon by an autumnal sunset,—as compared with Southern climes “obscurely bright,” and unpreceded by that beautiful rosy tint which bathes the whole landscape in Italy, but with a far finer background of clouds to reflect its departed glories: and throughout all this range of scenery he will never hunt in vain; indulgent gamekeepers, made aware of what he is poaching, may warn him that he is not collecting mushrooms, but will never warn him off from the best-kept preserves. In such rambles he will see, what I have this autumn (1847) myself witnessed, whole hundredweights of rich wholesome diet rotting under the trees; woods teeming with food and not one hand to gather it; and this, perhaps, in the midst of potato blight, poverty and all manner of privations, and public prayers against imminent famine. I have indeed grieved, when I reflected on the straitened condition of the lower orders this year, to see pounds innumerable of extempore beef-steaks growing on our oaks in the shape of Fistulina hepatica; Ag. fusipes to pickle, in clusters under them; Puff-balls, which some of our friends have not inaptly compared to sweet-bread for the rich delicacy of their unassisted flavour; Hydna as good as oysters, which they somewhat resemble in taste; Agaricus deliciosus, reminding us of tender lamb-kidneys; the beautiful yellow Chantarelle, that kalon kagathon of diet, growing by the bushel, and no basket but our own to pick up a few specimens in our way; the sweet nutty-flavoured Boletus, in vain calling himself edulis where there was none to believe him; the dainty Orcella; the Ag. heterophyllus, which tastes like the craw-fish when grilled; the Ag. ruber and Ag. virescens, to cook in any way, and equally good in all;—these were among the most conspicuous of the trouvailles. But that the reader may know all he is likely to find in one single autumn, let him glance at the catalogue below.197 He may at first alarm his friends’ cooks, but their fears will, I promise him, soon be appeased, after one or two trials of this new class of viands, and he will not long pass either for a conjuror or something worse, in giving directions to stew toadstools. As soon as he is initiated in this class of dainties, he will, I am persuaded, lose no time in making the discovery known to the poor of the neighbourhood; while in so doing he will render an important service to the country at large, by instructing the indigent and ignorant in the choice of an ample, wholesome, and excellent article, which they may convert into money, or consume at their own tables, when properly prepared, throughout the winter.

Note on the Arrangement of the Spores in Hymenomycetous Funguses

On the authority of Link, Fries, Vittadini, and other Continental mycologists, I have, in speaking of the spores of the genera Agaricus, Boletus, Cantharellus, Hydnum, and Clavaria, represented them as enclosed in cases (thecæ or sporanges). But from an interesting memoir, published by Mr. Berkeley in the ‘Annals of Natural History,’ “On the Fructification of the Pileate and Clavate tribes of Hymenomycetous Fungi,” which I had not then perused, it would appear that this arrangement only holds good with respect to Pezizas, Helvellas, and Morels, and not with respect to the above-mentioned genera, the spores of which are attached (generally in a quaternary and star form) to the ends of tubes, to which Mr. Berkeley has given the name of sporophores; a disposition which, as he observes, had been long ago pointed out by the great Florentine mycologist, Micheli. M. Montagne, in his ‘Recherches Anatomiques et Physiologiques sur l’Hymenium,’ while he confirms the fact of a quaternary disposition of the spores in general, thinks that during the first stage of their development they are lodged within the sporiferous tubes, to the mouths of which they afterwards adhere by means of short spiculæ or branchlets.

These, like all other questions connected with the minute reproductive granules of funguses, require for their solution not only the most dexterous manipulation and the aid of the finest modern microscopes, but are likely even then to exercise the ingenuity of the curious.

Footnotes

¹ The word seed here, or wherever else introduced into the present work, is to be understood in its popular acceptation; correctly speaking, spores differ from seeds in the absence of an apparent embryo; but in a more catholic sense spores are seeds, since both are germinating granules, producing each after their kind.

2 At from twenty to thirty baiocchi, i. e. at about 1 s. 3 d. a pound.

3 The population of Rome is only 154,000; that of Naples, 360,000; and that of Venice, 180,000.

4 The Chinese present a striking contrast with ourselves in the care which they bestow on their esculent vegetation. “Some days since, M. Stanislas Julien presented to the Academy of Sciences, at Paris, a Chinese work, which merits a word or two of notice in the present circumstances of agricultural Europe. It is a treatise, in six volumes, with plates, entitled ‘The Anti-Famine Herbal;’ and contains the descriptions and representations of four hundred and fourteen different plants, whose leaves, rinds, stalks, or roots are fitted to furnish food for the people, when drought, ravages of locusts, or the overflow of the great rivers have occasioned a failure of rice and grain. Of this book the Chinese Government annually prints thousands, and distributes them gratuitously in those districts which are most exposed to natural calamities. Such an instance of provident solicitude on the part of the Chinese Government for the suffering classes may be suggestive here at home. A more general knowledge of the properties and capabilities of esculent plants would be an important branch of popular education.”—Athenæum, Nov. 16, 1846.

5 There are three kinds of esculent funguses in Italy to which the epithet albus might apply, viz. the Amanita alba, of Persoon, the Lycoperdon Bovista, Linn. (or common puff-ball), and Agaricus campestris, Linn. (our common mushroom). The first kind grows in woods, and the second in dry uncultivated spots, whereas Ovid mentions these in conjunction with the Mallow (Malva), which grows in moist meadow-land; it is probable, therefore, that he here alludes to the Pratajolo, or meadow mushroom, or to that variety of it called from its whiteness “boule de neige.”

6 Etymol. ad locum.

7 Well-fed domestic pigs, on the authority of a friend, refuse it; but possibly, in the absence of full supplies of corn, they might be less dainty.

8 Vittadini assures us that the “slips of dried boletus, sold on strings, are as frequently from these kinds as from the Boletus edulis itself; notwithstanding which, no accident was ever known to happen from the indiscriminate use of either.”

9 Dioscorides, who lived in the time of Nero, says that pigs dig up “truffles” in spring. Matthiolus, in his commentaries, speaks of an inferior, smooth-barked, red truffle known to the ancients, to which the above remark of Dioscorides perhaps applies; certainly it does not apply to the black truffle, which begins to come into the Roman market in November, and is over long before the spring.

10 The Thracians are said to have intended this same misy under the new epithet of κεραύνιον, as though it were produced by thunder, unless indeed, as in Theoph. lib. i. cap. ix., we should read κρανίον, in which case they meant the Lycoperdon giganteum, a fungus frequently as big as, and in the form of, the human head: whence its name of cranium.

11 Whoever has time to waste on the unprofitable speculations of the ancients concerning the parentage of funguses, and would like so to waste it, may consult Pliny, lib. xvi. cap. 8, lib. xxii. cap. 23; Hist. Nat. Dioscorides, lib. iii. cap. 78; Athenæus, lib. ii. in the Deipnosophisti; and after them Galen, Clusius, Portæ (Villæ, lib. x.), Imperato (Hist. Nat.), etc. The first really philosophical treatise which ascribes their origin, like that of other plants, to seeds, was published by Micheli, at Florence, in 1720.

12 Roques.

13 Vittadini.

14 ‘Trattati dei Funghi.’ Roma, 1804.

15 Have not both the words Tode and the stool called after him some etymological, as they have undoubtedly a fanciful, connection with the word tod, death?

16 Juvenal.

17 Few minute objects are more beautiful than certain of these mucedinous fungi fungorum. A common one besets the back of some of the Russulæ in decay, spreading over it, especially if the weather be moist, like thin flocks of light wool, presenting on the second day a bluish tint on the surface. Under a powerful magnifier, myriads of little glasslike stalks are brought into view, which bifurcate again and again, each ultimate twig ending in a semilucent head, or button, at first blue, and afterwards black; which, when it comes to burst, scatters the spores, which are then (under the microscope) seen adhering to the sides of the delicate filamentary stalks like so many minute limpets.

18 Vide the London Docks, passim; where he pays his unwelcome visits, and is in even worse odour than the exciseman.

19 “Sir Joseph Banks having a cask of wine, rather too sweet for immediate use, he directed that it should be placed in a cellar, that the saccharine it contained might be more decomposed by age; at the end of three years he directed his butler to ascertain the state of the wine, when, on attempting to open the cellar-door, he could not effect it, in consequence of some powerful obstacle; the door was consequently cut down, when the cellar was found to be completely filled with a fungous production, so firm, that it was necessary to use an axe for its removal. This appeared to have grown from, or to have been nourished by, the decomposing particles of the wine, the cask being empty, and carried up to the ceiling, where it was supported by the fungus.”—Chambers’s Journal.

20 Withering found one of these plants on the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral; the first he had seen!

21 Sporendonema Muscæ.

22 “When healthy caterpillars are placed within reach of a silkworm that has been destroyed by the Botrytis, they, too, contract the disease, and at last perish.”—Chambers’s Journal, October, 1845.

23 A species of Polystrix is affected, whilst alive, with a parasitic kind of fungus, called Sphæria, which grows out of it, and feeds upon it.

24 Several of the French surgeons have given recitals of cases where, on removal of the bandages from sore surfaces, they have found a collection of funguses growing upon them, generally about the size of the finger (Lemery); one of them adds, that having reapplied the wrappings, a second batch came out in the course of twenty-four hours, and this for several days consecutively.

25 For an accurate description of these funguses, the reader is referred to the excellent work of Mr. Berkeley.

26 These, beautiful, but fleeting as beauty’s blush, generally perish within a few hours; but I have seen some which, after a potting of 2000 years, retained their original hues unblemished, for they had been potted with the town of Pompeii, and are preserved with the other frescoes upon its walls.

27 The Mitrati are not a very numerous class, of which the Morel may be taken as the type.

28 The Cupulati, so called in consequence.

29 A. piperatus.

30 A. procerus.

31 Agaricus comatus, in allusion no doubt to which Plautus says of the Lord Chancellor of his day, “Fungino genere est, capiti se totum tegit,”—that his wig was so long as to hide his whole person.

32 The Nidularias do so.

33 The surface is rough with elevated papillæ, the structure fibrous, the flesh softly elastic, the colour bright red, looking like the tongue in the worst forms of gastro-enterite, with which its cold clammy surface when touched offers no correspondence.

34 A. micaceus.

35 Thore.

36 Agaricus narcoticus, Batsch, Fascic. vol. ii. pl. 81.

37 A. alliaceus.

38 A. cinnamomeus.

39 Fries.

40 Bolton.

41 Persoon.

42 Micheli.

43 These last, placed in a wineglass, over a sheet of white paper, frequently disperse the seminal dust over a ring of twice the natural dimensions of the Agaric.

44 “One dark night, about the beginning of December, while passing along the streets of the Villa de Natividade, I observed some boys amusing themselves with some luminous object, which I at first supposed to be a kind of large fire-fly; but, on making inquiry, I found it to be a beautiful phosphorescent fungus, belonging to the genus Agaricus, and was told that it grew abundantly in the neighbourhood, on the decaying leaves of a dwarf palm. Next day I obtained a great many specimens, and found them to vary from one to two and a half inches across. The whole plant gives out at night a bright phosphorescent light, of a pale greenish hue, similar to that emitted by the larger fire-flies, or by those curious, soft-bodied, marine animals, the Pyrosomæ; from this circumstance, and from growing on a palm, it is called by the inhabitants ‘Flor do Coco;’ the light given out by a few of these fungi in a dark room, was sufficient to read by. It proved to be quite a new species, and, since my return from Brazil, has been described by the Rev. M. J. Berkeley under the name of Agaricus Gardneri, from preserved specimens which I brought home.”—Travels in the Interior of Brazil, 1846.

45 Hence it was called κρανίον (vide Theoph. Lib. vol. i. cap. 9) by the ancients. Cesalpinus describes it under the name of Peziza, and reports that it is common in the woods of Pisa, whence men gather to eat them. We read also, in an ancient Italian writer (Cicinelli), that the environs of Padua produce enormous puff-balls, of which one (unless this author was given to puffing) measured not less than two feet across, in one direction, being upwards of a foot and a half in its least diameter. It was big enough, he says, to have written on its rind the celebrated inscription attributed by Dion Cassius to the Dacians, which they presented to the Emperor, “in quo scriptum erat Latinis literis Burros sociosque omnes eum hortari ut domum reverteretur pacemque coleret.” Other authors also (Alph. de Tuberibus,—not truffles, but puff-balls,—cap. xvii.; Imperato, Hist. Nat. Hol. vol. xxvii. cap. 5) speak of puff-balls of sixty and one hundred pounds weight.

46 Hist. Plant. vol. ii. p. 275.

47 Villæ, Lib. vol. x. cap. 80.

48 By this word, however, the vulgar generally understood the Cantharellus cibarius.

49 This species, which is somewhat rare in England, occurred in abundance this year (1847) in the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells. I found four specimens of it on the oak-roots in the Grove, one of which rose nearly a foot from the ground, measured considerably more than two and a half feet across, and weighed from eighteen to twenty pounds; the other specimens were of much smaller dimensions.

50 Robert Scott, Act. Linn. Soc. vol. viii. p. 202.

51 Dufresnoy.

52 Roques.

53 Amadou is largely used in Italy, where it is called esca; the Latins likewise knew it by this name, though their more common appellation for it was fomes; the Byzantine Greeks hellenicized esca into ὕσκα, which was their word for it; the ancient Greeks called it ζώπυρον. Salmasius tells us how it used to be made in his time, which indeed was the same as now: the fungus was first boiled, then beaten to pieces in a mortar, next hammered out to deprive it of its woody fibres, and lastly, being steeped in a strong solution of nitre, was left to dry in the sun. It appears, on the testimony of the anonymous author of the article “Fungo” in the ‘Dizionario Classico di Medicina,’ that it is also eaten when young; but I cannot speak of it from personal experience:—“In prima età mangiasi colto di fresco affettato e condito d’ogni modo; specialmente nelle provincie di Belluno ed Udine, o salasi per la quadragesima.”

54 “Di questo fungo servavanosene i barbieri in cambio delle strugghie dette più volgaremente codette, atte a far riprendere il perduto filo a loro rasoi.”

55 “This is the ‘Moucho more’ of the Russians, Kamtchadales, and Koriaks, who use it for intoxication; they sometimes eat it dry, but more commonly immersed in a liquor made from the Epilobium, and when they drink this liquor, they are seized with convulsions in all their limbs, followed with that kind of raving which accompanies a burning fever. They personify this mushroom, and, if they are urged by its effects to suicide, or any other dreadful crime, they pretend to obey its commands; to fit themselves for premeditated assassination they recur to the use of the Moucho more.”—Rees’s Cyclopædia, art. “Agaric.”

56 In such cases the minute fungus is probably absorbed in ovo and disseminated with the sap through the plant; as this ascends from the root, it remains undeveloped however till the corn is in ear, at which time it finds in the nascent grain the necessary conditions for its own development.

57 The mischief thus produced by dry-rot may be arrested by steeping the affected timber in a solution of corrosive sublimate, which, forming a chemical union with the juices of the woody fibre, prevents their being abstracted by the dry-rot, that would else have maintained itself and spread at their expense.

58 A reputation that revives may not be so good as one that survives, but the very fact of such revival shows that the good opinion formerly entertained was not altogether groundless.

59 Enslin was in the habit of uniting this Polyporus with Peruvian Bark, and obtained from it the happiest results: “Omnium mihi arridet connubium ejus cum cortice Peruviano”—to which “connubium,” no doubt, some of its good effects are to be attributed.

60 Haller relates, that the inhabitants of Piedmont are in the habit of swallowing a small piece of this Agaric, when they have drunk with their water some of those small leeches in which it abounds. Bomare mentions of this same Agaric, that the inhabitants of Balcu use it in powder to heal blains in their cattle.

61 Hunter.

62 It is the Frenchman’s heart! “J’ai mal au cœur” means, as every one knows, in the French tongue, not ‘I am sick at heart,’ as it professes to say, but ‘I am sick at stomach’!

63 Walpole.

64 The phrase “I like it, but it does not like me,” which one sometimes hears at table, having a reference to some particular idiosyncrasy of the party who makes the remark, does not invalidate the truth of this general proposition.

65 Pope. Mead, if anybody, ought to have been good authority on the subject of this particular diet. He had written, ex professo, upon poisons; and the Florentine mycologist Micheli had dedicated several newly-discovered funguses to him. He was therefore both a Toxicologist and a Mycologist.

66 “No thought too bold, no airy dream too light,
That will not prompt your Theorist to write;
No fact so stubborn, and no proof so strong,
Will e’er convince him he could argue wrong.”

—Crabbe.

67 Broussais divides inflammatory dyspepsia into five parts or acts. That Leach of leeches, whose word once passed for more than it was worth, came at last to see himself and his sangsues utterly abandoned, and to have the mortification of lecturing in his old age to empty benches. “Quantum mutatus ab illo” of less than twenty years before, and who had been the cause of as much innocent bloodshedding as Napoleon himself, and used to kill his patients that his leeches might be fed!

68 “Fungus qualiscunque sit semper malignus.”—Kirker, Lib. de Pest.

69 “Apage ergo perniciosa isthæc gulæ blandimenta.”

70 “Quot colores tot dolores, quot species tot pernicies.”

71 M. Roques gives at the end of his treatise on funguses a long list of his mycophilous friends, including in the number many of the most eminent medical men of the French capital—if medical men are more careful of what they eat than their neighbours, which, however, is exceedingly doubtful.

72 “To eat raw mushrooms” was a proverbial expression among the Greeks, as is shown by the passage which Athenæus quotes out of a play of Antiphanes, called the ‘Proverbs’:—Ἔγω γάρ ἂν τῶν ὑμετέρων φάγοιμί τι, μύκητας ὠμοὺς αὔτικ’ ἂν φαγεῖν δοκάω.

73 Those who themselves know better, smile to read such passages as the following, which is to be found in old Gerard’s ‘Herbal’:—“Galen affirms that they (i. e. funguses) are all very cold and moist, and therefore do approach unto a venomous and mothering facultie, and engender a clammy and pituitous nutriment; if eaten, therefore, I give my advice unto those that love such strange and new-fangled meates, to beware of licking honey among thorns, lest the sweetnesse of the one do not countervaille the sharpnesse and pricking of the other.”

74 A life of labour, no doubt, will make the sorriest fare sit more lightly on the healthy stomach, than the most dainty viands which have been received into an organ that is weakened and goaded by a life of dissipation and excess; but this does not prove sorry fare to be more wholesome than that of a richer kind. No! Dyspepsia is a disease of the rich; not because they live upon the fat of the land, but plainly because they indulge in too large a quantity at a meal. Let the peasant and the lord change places for a week; place the healthy rustic at the rich man’s table, and Dives again at the other board, what would be the results to both? Would not the poor man, think you, find indigestion in ragoût, fricassees, truffles, with light wine ad libitum to drink with them? and would not the rich man find that the fat pork and hard beer were worse poison than any of the made-dishes, against which he has been so lavish in his blame? In general, no doubt, to be “the happiest of mortals—to digest well” (Voltaire), men should look more to the quantum and less to the quale of what they eat; but they should pay some attention to this too.

75 Ἢν δὲ πάντα ὅμοια ποιήσῃ οὐκ ἔχει τέρψιν. Π.Δ. Α. 10.

76 That I did not always hold such an opinion as the above, to which I have since given in my adhesion, the following ode to Eupepsia, written in the days of theoretical inexperience, will sufficiently testify. I am now convinced that Hippocrates was right!—
Happy the man whose prudent care
 Plain boiled and roast discreetly bound;
Content to feed on homely fare,
 On British ground!
Sound sleep renounces sugared peas!—
 No nightmares haunt the modest ration
Of tender steak, that yields with ease
 To mastication!
From stews and steams that round them play,
 How many a tempting dish would floor us,
Had nature made no toll to pay
 At the pylorus!

He dines unscathed, who dines alone!
 Or shuns abroad those corner dishes;
No Roman garlics make him groan,
 Nor matelotte fishes.
Then let not Vérey’s treacherous skill,
 Nor Véfour’s, try thy peptic forces;
One comes to swallow many a pill
 Where many a course is!
With mushroomed dishes cease to strive;
 Nor for that truffled crime inquire,
Which nails the hapless goose alive,
 At Strasburg’s fire.

77 Heberden wisely left it to his patients, except in acute cases of disease or when they were gluttons, “to eat what pleased them, finding that many apparently unfit substances” (which funguses are not) “agreed with the stomach merely because they were suitable to its feelings.” Why quote Abernethy?—but that good sense, backed by personal experience in such matters, are always worth quoting—who says, “Nothing hurts me that I eat with appetite and delight;” or Withers, unless for a like reason, who is “of opinion that the instinct of the palate, not misguided by preconceived opinion, may be satisfied, not only with impunity, but even with advantage.” It is the rule by which the brute creation is taught to shun its poison and to choose its food: to a considerable extent, it should be ours also.

78 Roques, ‘Traité sur les Champignons.’

79 Æschines.

80 “Pratensibus optima fungis Natura est.”—Horace.

81 Locality has a great effect upon almost all that we eat: our very mutton varies in different counties; compare the town-bred gutter-fed poultry of London with that of twenty miles around; fish vary, the tench out of different ponds are different; fruits vary with the soil; are potatoes everywhere the same?

82 Persons have fancied themselves poisoned when they were not; indigestion produced by mushrooms is looked upon with fear and suspicion, and if a medical man be called in, the stomach-pump used, and relief obtained, nothing will persuade either patient or practitioner that this has not been a case of poisoning. “You have saved my life,” says the one. “I think you will not be persuaded to eat any more mushrooms for some time,” says the other: and so they part, each under the impression that he knows more about mushrooms than anybody else can tell him.

83 It grows not only throughout Europe, but in India also.

84 We should apply the same rules of discrimination here as elsewhere. Have we not picked potatoes for our table out of the deadly family of Solana? selected with care the garden from the fool’s parsley? And do we not pickle gherkins, notwithstanding their affinity to the Elaterium momordicum, which would poison us if we were to eat it?

85 “N’est-il pas bien plus simple et bien plus sûr en même temps, puisqu’on le peut, de prévenir les maux, que de spéculer sur les moyens si souvent incertains de les guérir?”—Bull. Pl. Vénén. p. 11.

86 Vide Vittadini and Roques.

87 Roques fell in with two soldiers at St. Cyr, who had gathered and were in the act of carrying off twice the quantity of this fungus necessary to kill the regiment, when he interfered, and no doubt saved many lives in doing so. The soldiers, it appears, had mistaken the Ag. necator for the Hydnum repandum, to which it bears some slight resemblance in colour, and in nothing else.

88 The converse of this remark by no means holds true; the Amanita verna, the Am. phalloides, the Ag. semiglobatus, dryophilus, and muscarius, though amongst the most deadly of this class of plants, do not change colour on being cut; the flesh of the first two is, moreover, of a tempting whiteness, like that of the common puff-ball, than which there is not a safer or a better fungus. “Omnino ne crede colori” is our only safe motto here.

89 Johnson’s Dictionary.

90 He was wrong here: the oak produces both the Fistulina hepatica and the Agaricus fusipes, two excellent funguses, particularly the last, which, properly dressed or pickled, have not many rivals.

91 As was known to the Greeks, ‘Prepare your funguses with vinegar, salt, or honey, for thus you will rob them of their poison,’ οὕτω γὰρ αὐτῶν τὸ πνιγώδες ἀφαιρεῖται.

92 Vittadini, however, ate largely of this fungus, which he describes as very disagreeable, though it did not prove poisonous to him.

93 Puccinelli.

94 In a whole family, cut off in the year 1843, at Lucca, by dining on some poisonous Boletuses, drawn and first described by Professor Puccinelli under the ominous name of Boletus terribilis, besides most extensive ulceration of the mucous coat of the intestines throughout a very considerable portion of their extent, together with injection of the vessels of the brain, the lungs were found congested, and the cavities of the heart distended, with coagula of blood.

95 For a most interesting record of all the more recent poisonings from funguses in Italy, the reader may consult Professor delle Chiaje’s work on Toxicology. The following, the only one I shall give, is to be found in Vittadini’s excellent work on funguses:—
“Giovanna Ballerini, montanara, d’ anni 26, moglie di Luigi Dodici, nativa di Brugnello, Stato Sardo, e domiciliata in Lardirago, distretto di Belgiojoso, provincia di Pavia, mangiò la sera del 19 maggio, 1831, in compagnia di due suoi nipoti, Giuseppe Ballerini d’ anni 6, e Maria, d’ anni 12, buona copia d’ agarici di primavera, cotti nella minestra. Erano dessi stati colti nel vicin bosco della Rossa, e da quella sventurata probabilmente scambiati coi Prugnuoli (Ag. mouceron, Bull.), funghi generalmente conosciuti da quegli alpigiani sotto il nome di Spinaroli, o Maggenghi. All’ indomani allontanossi Giovanna da casa, come era suo costume, onde provvedere ai proprj bisogni, ma trascorse alcune ore venne assalita da forte oppressione all’ epigastrio, da nausee, da conati di vomito, ecc., e costretta infine verso il meriggio dalla gravezza del patire a tornarsene a casa, ove trovò dallo stesso male tormentati anche i nipoti. I principali fenomeni morbosi che presentavano quegli infelici all’ arrivo di Giovanna erano: nausee continue, dolori acutissimi allo stomaco ed alle intestina, deliquj frequenti, convulsioni, ecc. Poco dopo Maria ed in seguito Giovanna vennero prese da vomito ostinato di materie bigio-nerastre, a cui s’accoppiava bentosto, per colmo di sventura, un’ abbondante soccorrenza della stessa materia, e più innanzi di pretto sangue. Impotente a recere, Giuseppe si struggeva in vani conati di vomito. Chiamato verso sera in loro soccorso il sig. dott. Luigi Casorati, medico condotto del luogo, mio collega ed amico, s’ adoperò ma invano per sostare il vomito ed il colera, che specialmente in Maria ed in Giovanna andavano sempre più imperversando. Le bevande mucilaginose, il latte, gli oppiati, le fomentazioni ammollienti sull’ addome a nulla giovarono. Si tentò la sanguigna, ma anche questa senza effetto. Alle ore 7 del mattino del giorno 21, 38 ore circa dall’ ingestione del fungo, Giuseppe, chi si era ostinatamente rifiutato ad ogni medicina, non era più; nè miglior sorte incontravano Maria e Giovanna, chi, tradotte all’ ospedale di Pavia, non ostante i soccorsi che vennero loro prodigati, perivano nella stessa giornata fra le più terribili angosce, e senza perdere gran fatto l’ uso dei sensi, la prima verso il meriggio, l’ altra verso le ore sette pomeridiane. All’ autopsia del cadavere di Giuseppe Ballerini, eseguitasi in Lardirago, sotto i miei occhi, dallo stesso Dottor Casorati che gentilmente me ne fece invito, ed alla quale assisteva pure il sig. dott. G. Galliotti, si trovò lo stomaco zeppo di un liquido verdastro, entro cui nuotavano ancora, unitamente a buona porzione di riso e di erbe, varj pezzetti del fungo non ancora decomposti, e che potei agevolmente riconoscere a qual parte della pianta appartenessero; la mucosa di quel viscere sensibilmente injettata, e coperta, specialmente lungo la piccola curvatura ed in vicinanza del piloro, di grandi macchie di color roseo-livido intenso. Le intestina tenui pur esse ove più ove meno injettate, e del color dello scarlatto, le crasse morbosamente ristrette, ma meno delle tenui ingorgate; sì le une che le altre vuote d’alimenti, e non contenenti che poca quantità di muco bigio-nerastro e qualche lombrico. Le meningi erano anch’ esse sommamente injettate, specialmente la pia; la sostanza del cervello meno consistente del naturale, punteggiata di rosso, e la base dello stesso nuotante in una quantità considerabile di siero sanguinolento.”—Vitt. p. 340.

96 When dried, gr. xx.-xxv. will scarcely produce the effects of gr. v. of the fungus when first gathered.—Vitt.

97 The total quantity of moisture absorbed by funguses, during development and growth, is great; thus, if a number of small Agarics, still in their wrappers, be placed in wineglasses half filled with water, this will be rapidly absorbed, even before they break through their membrane. Moreover, if Agarics or Boletuses, already developed, be placed in glasses containing so many ounces of water, the amount of which has been previously ascertained, and equal to that in another glass, by which to make allowance for what has been lost by evaporation, the result will generally be that a quantity of water, equal to from one-fourth to one-third of the full weight of each fungus, will have been absorbed and exhaled again in two days. The redundant moisture of those plants is rendered conspicuous if we place a Boletus on a watch-glass, the surface of which is speedily beaded with drops of water, as if it had been in the rain; while the quantity of fluid is sometimes so great as to defeat the object we had in placing it there, viz. that of collecting the spores.

98 The reader desirous of a detailed account of this interesting fungus, should consult a small quarto brochure published some years ago, by Professor Gasparini, of Naples, who was preparing a second edition in the autumn of 1844, with numerous additions, which has, no doubt, been reprinted.

99 Or rather, as Professor Tenore has told me, from the Populus nigra, var. Neapolitana.

100 Müller declares that fermentation is itself a fungus, which continues to feed and multiply so long as it finds the elements of nutrition in the liquid in which it originates. This, then, is employing one fungus life to evoke another.

101 All blocks of this nut-wood do not bear. Professor Sanguinetti informs me that the peasants in the Abruzzi, who bring in these logs, know perfectly which will succeed and which will not; “a knowledge,” he adds, “to which closest attention during all the years that I have been employed by the Papal Government as superintendent of the fungus market, has not yet enabled me to attain.”

102 On digging up the earth in the neighbourhood of a ring in which A. prunulus was at the time growing, I found the mould to the depth of a foot and more, hoary, with an arachnoid spawn strongly charged with the odour of this mushroom. Persoon found that to destroy a fairy-ring of the same Agaric, it was necessary to dig to a considerable depth, when the next crop that came up was disseminated sporadically over the ground.

103 This was the opinion of the Greeks, who called funguses γηγενεῖς, or earthborn.

104 Just as in the inorganic world, chemical analysis is frequently the precursor of new forms of matter resulting from the new affinities which take place, so when a vegetable dies, and the synthesis of its structural arrangement is broken up, nature frequently avails herself of this season of decomposition, to bring new individuals out of the decaying structures of the old, which, in consequence of a beautiful pre-arrangement, find there all the requisite supplies for their growth and future maintenance.

105 Some mycologists however, as Persoon and Roques, conceive that the common dust of puff-balls is analogous to the pollen of the higher plants, while the real seed is to be sought and found in a finer dust, which is entangled in the reticular meshes at the base of these plants. Others suppose the fluid which bathes the interiors of those little organs, in which the seeds are packed, to be in other funguses the source of their fecundation. But these at present are mere conjectures.

106 Several byssoid growths are in this predicament.

107 “Who seek for life in creatures they dissect,
Will lose it in the moment they detect.”

—Pope.

108 The colours of the spores are of considerable practical use in distinguishing the members of the large family of Agarics, some of which are determined by them.

109 It appears too mechanical an explanation of a phenomenon so purely vital as growth, to make it in any way dependent on a system of wedges, however ingeniously applied.

110 “The facility with which these floccose threads are injured, and their connection destroyed, explains,” says Vittadini, “the difficulty of transplanting funguses with success.”

111 The great rapidity with which these wonderful changes succeed each other in funguses with a volva, is widely different from what occurs in those that have none. Thus the Morel takes thirty-one days, Geasters six, and many Tubers twelve months for their full development: so that “To come up like a mushroom” is a proverb with limitations.

112 When the base is formed before the receptacle, the fibres are continuous; but when the receptacle has been formed first, as the fibres of the last cannot be transmitted through those already formed, these two parts remain distinct.

113 In the first instance the fungus is called annulate, in the second cortinate.

114 i. e. when these happen to be of different hues originally, the fragments of the veil being in some places covered by those of the wrapper, in others naked.

115 Raii Syn. 2.

116 λευκὸς, white, and σπόρος, a seed.

117 Ag. ovoides (Bull.), which is white, and Ag. Cæsareus (Scop.), which is red, with yellow gills, belong to this division.

118 λεπὶς, a scale.

119 Armilla, a ring.

120 This ring seems formed by the external fibres of the stalk, which, having reached the posterior extremity of the gills, are reflected backwards to the margin of the pileus when they become attached.

121 Limax, a slug.

122 θρὶξ, a hair, and λῶμα, a fringe.

123 Not described by Vittadini among the esculent funguses of Italy, and so probably unknown there.

124 Russulus, red.

125 γάλα, milk, and ῥέω, to flow.

126 κλίτος, a declivity, and κυβὴ, a head.

127 δασὺς, thick, and φύλλον, a leaf.

128 καμάρα, a vault, and φύλλον, a leaf.

129 χόνδρος, a ligament, and ποῦς, a foot.

130 κόλλυβος, a copper coin.

131 μύκης, a fungus.

132 ὀμφαλὸς, umbilicus.

133 πλευρὸν, a side, and ποῦς, a foot.

134 ὑπὸ, under, and ῥόδεος, rose-coloured.

135 κλίτος, a declivity, and πῖλος, a cap.

136 λεπτὸς, slender.

137 Nola, a little bell.

138 ἐκκοιλόω, to hollow out.

139 Cortina, a veil.

140 τελαμὼν, lint.

141 ἱνὸς, of a fibre, λῶμα, a fringe.

142 δέρμα, a skin, and κυβὴ, a head.

143 Pratum, a pasture.

144 ψάλιον, a ring.

145 κόπρος, dung.

146 κάνθαρος, a cup.

147 πολὺς, many, and πόρος, a pore.

148 βῶλος, a ball.

149 Named from the fistulous nature of the hymenium.

150 ὕδνον, a truffle, etc.

151 Clava, a club.

152 Name Latinized from the German Bofist.

153 They are reproduced in these rings about the same time every year, the circle continuing to enlarge till it breaks up at last into irregular lines, which is a sure sign to the collector that the Prunulus is about to disappear from that place, just as the presence of an unbroken ring is conclusive of a plentiful harvest the next spring.

154 These lobes, formed by the constriction of the pileus, whilst emerging from the roots of the grass, are sometimes so much strangulated as to present the appearance of small stalkless Agarics growing from the large, and projecting from their sides like ears.

155 That is, connected by a tooth to the end of the stalk, and not running down it.

156 The Prunulus is much prized in the Roman market, where it easily fetches 30 baiocchi, i. e. 15d. per lb.; a large sum for any luxury at Rome. It is sent in little baskets as presents to patrons, fees to medical men, and bribes to Roman lawyers. When dried, it constitutes the so-called “Funghi di Genoa,” which are sold on strings throughout Italy.

157 If the Suillus be indeed the same as the modern Porcino, as its name would imply, few who know how good it is will be disposed to pity Martial, who laments his hard case, in having had to eat this fungus at his patron’s table, while he feasted on the Boletus, i. e. the Ag. Cæsareus. It would seem however from this epigram, that the Suillus was not in Martial’s time, what it now unquestionably is, a favourite with the rich.

158 “Il Sorvegliatore fa gettare ai venditori tutti i funghi fracidi e quelli che crede nocivi, ed è assolutamente proibita la vendita dei così detti prateroli buoni o cattivi che sieno.”—Sanguinetti (extract from an unpublished letter).

159 “This is that variety of Ag. campestris which has been so often confounded with the Amanita verna, and with these the Ag. albus virosus; all these funguses, besides presenting a strong similarity in appearance, are found in the same locality, and at about the same time of year.”—Vitt.

160 Ude complains that we have none of the light French wines for sauces except champagne. Cider or perry will, however, be found good substitutes.

161 “Hopkirk records an instance of one weighing five pounds six ounces, and measuring forty-three inches in circumference. Withering mentions another that weighed fourteen pounds.”—Berkeley.

162 “It is commonly supposed that such funguses as change colour afford thereby a clear evidence of their noxious properties, and yet daily experience, as far as it went, ought to have led to just the opposite conclusion. Almost all the poisonous Agarics have a flesh that does not change colour, and we know as yet of no Boletus, many of which do so change, that is really unsafe to eat.”—Vitt.

163 This blue loses much of its intensity by long exposure to the air. It is moreover to be remarked that in specimens, the flesh of which has been eaten into by slugs or insects, no change of colour takes place.

164 This requires further corroboration.

165 Sc. “Blue Hats” (?), as Ag. Georgii is called “White Caps,” and Ag. Oreades “Scotch Bonnets.”

166 This mushroom, famous for the flavour it imparts to rich soups and gravies, is also used in the French “à la mode” beef shops in London, with the view of heightening the flavour of that dish. As the aroma is dissipated by overcooking, it should be thrown in only a few minutes before serving. The dried Champignon is much more extensively used in France and Italy than it is in England.

167 Although the Ag. oreades be, properly speaking, a terrestrial and not a parasitical fungus, still as it springs up amidst the roots of the grasses and flourishes by depriving them of their supplies, the herbage in its neighbourhood is the first to scorch up and wither.

168 I have, however, found them white.

169 “Dans le département des landes on sème l’Agaricus Palomet. Pour cela on se contente d’arroser la terre d’un bosquet planté en chênes avec de l’eau dans laquelle on a fait bouillir une grande quantité de ces champignons; la culture n’exige d’autres soins que d’éloigner de ces lieux les chevaux, les pores et les bêtes à cornes, qui sont très-friandes de ces plantes; ce moyen réussit toujours, mais nous laissons aux physiciens à nous expliquer pourquoi l’ébullition n’a pas fait mourir les germes.”—Thore.

170 The reader must not conclude from this that soil, any more than age, will account for such differences; there is a variety of Ag. alutaceus, described by Vittadini, which he says is “endowed with a very caustic taste, smelling of pepper, and to be avoided.” The kind generally found in England is probably the same as this, which Bulliard has described under the name of Ag. alutaceus acris.

171 “Sospettando ragionevolmente dietro le esperienze del Krapf e del Roques che questo fungo potesse esser nocivo all’ uomo e non agli animali, ho voluto anch’io sperimentarlo su di me stesso.”—Vitt.

172 I lately found a single specimen of it, which Vittadini says is rare.

173 On the Poplar and Willow, according to Vittadini; Apple and Laburnum, on the authority of Berkeley; Elm and Ash, on my own.

174 In some specimens the gills are all solitary.

175 Vitt.

176 It is probable that the varieties here referred to belonged to Ag. euosmus, B. Care must be taken to distinguish between the two, as Ag. euosmus is an unsafe species.—Ed.

177 Vitt.

178 A countryman, last spring (1847), stumbled upon a large quantity in the neighbourhood of Chiselhurst, Kent, and being struck with their appearance gathered some, and took them to a medical man of the place, who, not recognizing the plant, suffered the whole to perish! He has since been made aware of his mistake.

179 It is a common fraud in the Italian market for the salesmen to soak them in water; which increases their weight, but spoils their flavour.

180 In the Roman market the Morell is held in little esteem, and sells for 4d. or 5d. per lb. Three varieties of the esculenta are brought in by the “Asparagarii,” i. e. the peasants who gather the wild Asparagus on the hills; viz. the M. rotunda, which is almost globose, M. vulgaris, and M. fulva, which is of a tawny colour.

181 Though the F. hepatica grows both upon oak and chestnut trees, this difference in its origin never perceptibly affects the plant, which is equally good, whether it be gathered from one or from the other.

182 Whence the vernacular names, “Orgella,” “Orgelle,” and “Oreille.”

183 Most authors compare this odour to that of fresh meal, but as several friends think with me that the above comparison is more accurate, I have ventured to substitute it.

184 Mr. Berkeley says rose-coloured; Vittadini pale rust-colour; but I find that on placing a watch-glass thickly coated with spores on fine brown-holland, the colours very nearly correspond.

185 Berk. Brit. Fung.

186 The lobes are at first nearly white, afterwards of an ash-grey colour on the under surface; the upper, or that which bears the seed membrane, continuing white.

187 Another species of Peziza, the P. cochleata, grew very abundantly last spring in Holwood Park, Keston. This species is quite insipid, and somewhat leathery, but Mr. Berkeley has seen it offered for sale under the name of Morell.

188 The toughness is owing to its being stewed too quickly; when properly sweated with butter, as recommended for C. coralloides, it is quite tender.

189 There are, in fact, three at first, whereof the external one either coalesces with the second, or else peels off in shreds, when the other two become united, and continue to maintain the globular form of the Puff-ball unimpaired, even after the escape of the seed.

190 Without appendages.

191 Vittadini recommends, wherever this fungus grows conveniently for the purpose, that it should not be all taken at once, but by slices cut off from the living plant, care being taken not to break up its attachments with the earth; in this way, he says, you may have a fine “frittura” every day for a week.

192 I have been informed that this Puff-ball is sometimes served on state occasions at the Freemasons’ Tavern.

193 “Ce Champignon croît au milieu et vers le sommet de l’arbre, de sorte qu’il n’est pas facile à voir ou à récolter.”—Persoon.

194 Berkeley.

195 In 1843, the friends of a patient, for whom I had occasion to prescribe some musk, had recourse to many chemists in succession before the licensed dealer in it could be found, and he was obliged by law to keep it in his back premises.

196 Night fires. This is to clear the ground under the Chestnut-trees for the falling fruits, which might otherwise be lost amidst the heath. But the practice is unsafe; as many a tree has been charred by the flames, and some have actually taken fire and given rise to a general conflagration.

197 The whole of the species mentioned in the annexed list were met with by the author this summer and autumn (1847), and partaken of by himself and friends, viz. Amanita vaginata; Ag. rubescens, procerus, prunulus, ruber, heterophyllus, virescens; deliciosus, nebularis, personatus, virgineus, fusipes, oreades, ostreatus, Orcella, campestris (and its varieties edulis and pratensis), exquisitus, comatus, and ulmarius; Cantharellus cibarius; Polyporus frondosus; Boletus edulis and scaber; Fistulina hepatica; Hydnum repandum; Helvella lacunosa; Peziza acetabulum and Bovista plumbea; Lycoperdon gemmatum and Clavaria strigosa.

The End

John Edward Taylor, Printer,
Little Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.