THE
ESCULENT FUNGUSES
OP
ENGLAND.


I--





PI. I.

W.Fitch.Ad.etiith.
Yme-t.BrocMs.ln








A TREATISE
ESCULENT FUNGUSES
ENGLAND,
CONTAINING
AN ACCOUNT OP THEIE CLASSICAL HISTORY, USES, CHARACTERS,
DEVELOPMENT, STRUCTURE, NUTRITIOUS PBOPEBTIE8,
MODES OP COOKING AND PRESERVING, ETC.
CHARLES DAVID BAD HAM, M.D.
EDITED BY FREDERICK CURREY, M.A., F.R.S., F.L.S.
rioAAcc likv %(T& fieptypeva woAAi 5e ypd.—HOMER.

LONDON:
LOVELL REEVE & CO., HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
18C3.


(on
feinted ey
jobs edwakd tat loe, little queen btkekt,
Lincoln's inn fields.



TO THE SECOND EDITION.
PREFACE
My lamented friend Dr. Badham having died since the first
publication of this work, my advice was asked upon the sub-
ject 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 num-
ber of the Plates; but it appeared to me that some plates re-
lating 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 Fungo-
logy,' 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.
2"


vi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
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 eesiivum and Helvella esculenta.
The former must have been inadvertently omitted by Dr. Bad-
ham, 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 PI. XV.
fig. 6 of the first edition under the name of Lycoperdon plum-
beum, 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 gi-
ganteum.
There is some confusion about the synonymy of the plants
described by Dr. Badham as Agaricus prunulus and Ag. ex-
quisitus. 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, Ft., and Ag. arvensis,
Schseff.
Dr. Badham's observations on the spores of Fungi must be
read in connection with the note added by him at the conclu-
sion 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.'


PREPACK TO THE SECOND EDITION. vii
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 ex-
perience 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 perform-
ance 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.
Page
ETYMOLOGIES 1
THE BANGE OF FUNGUS GROWTHS 7
OF THEIR GENERAL FORMS, COLOURS, AND TEXTURE .... 10
ODOURS AND TASTES 13
EXPANSIVE POWER OF GROWTH 14
REPRODUCTIVE POWER 16
MOTION 16
PHOSPHORESCENCE 18
DIMENSIONS 18
CHEMICAL COMPOSITION 20
r USES 21
S 'MEDICAL USES 25
FUNGUSES CONSIDERED AS AN ARTICLE OF DIET 27
MODES OF DISTINGUISHING 40
CONDITIONS NECESSARY TO THEIR PRODUCTION 47
FAIRY RINGS 52
ON THE GROWTH OF FUNGUSES 53
ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SPORES, OR QUASI-SEEDS* . . 58
OF• THE ANNULU8, THE VELUM, AND THE VOLVA 66
OF THE STALK, AND OF THE PILEUS 68
OF THE GILLS, TUBES, PLAITS, AND SPINES 69
METHODICAL DISTRIBUTION OF BRITISH ESCULENT FUNGUSES . 72
DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES:
Agaricus acris minor 120
Agaricus alutaceus 117
Agaricus atramentarius Ill
Agaricus campestris ^4
Agaricus castanev* 143
Agaricus comatus 112
* 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
6eeds in the absence of an apparent embryo; but in a more catholic sense spores
arc seeds, since both are germinating granules, producing each after their kind.


X
CONTENTS.
Page
DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES—continued.
Agaricus deliciosus 102
Agaricus Dryophilus 107
Agaricus emeticus 118
Agaricus exquisitus 100
Agaricus fusipes 141
Agaricus heterophyllus 113
Agaricus melleus 139
Agaricus nebularis 108
Agaricus Orcella 129
Agaricus oreadcs 106
Agaricus ostreatus 121
Agaricus personatus 105
Agaricus piperatus 144
Agaricus procerus 88
Agaricus prunulus 85
Agaricus ruber 115
Agaricus rubescens 123
Agaricus sanguineus 120
Agaricus semiglobatus . . 1 108
Agaricus ulmarius 140
Agaricus vaginatus 142
Agaricus violaceus 143
Agaricus virescens 116
Agaricus virgineus. f 145
Boletus edulis 90
Boletus luridus 104
Boletus scaber 103
Cantharellus cibarius 110
Clavaria coralloides 135
Fistulina hepatica 127
Helvella crispa 130
Helvella lacunosa 131
Helvella esculenta 131
Hydnum repandum 126
Lycoperdon Bovista 138
Lycoperdon plumbeum 136
Morchella esculenta 123
Morchella semilibera 124
Peziza acetabulum 133
Polyporus frondosus 133
Tuber a>stivum 145
Verpa digitaliformis 132
conclusion 146


DESCRIPTION OP PLATES.
Plate VI.
Fig. 1, 2. Boletus scaber.
„ 3, 4, 5. Boletus luridus.
Plate VII.
Kg. 1, 2, 3. Agaricus comatus.
,, 4. Agaricus oreades.
„ 5. Agaricus Dryophilus.
Plate VIII.
Fig. 1. Cantharellus cibarius.
„ 2. Tuber aestivum.
., 3, 4. Hydmim repandum.
„ 5. Lycoperdon pyriforme.
PiATE IX.
Fig. 1, 2. Agaricus atramentarius.
„ 3. Agaricus raelleus.
Plate X.
Agaricus ostreatus.
Plate XI.
Fig. 1, 2. Agaricus Orcella.
„ 3, 4, 5. Agaricus rubescens.
Plate XII.
Fig. 1, 2. Fistulina hepatica.
„ 3, 4, 5. Helvella esculenta.
„ 6. Morchella esculenta.


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, lqft to perish ungathered.
In France, Germany, and Italy, Funguses not only consti-
tute for weeks together the sole diet of thousands, but the re-
sidue, 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


xiv
INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.
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 Congrega-
zione Speciale di Sanita, 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 hot unfre-
quently 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 sup-
posed 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 dep&t.
"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, ver-
minosi, 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


INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.
XT
refractory to the above regulations; and, finally, that he should furnish a weekly
report to the Tribunal of Provisions (II Tribunale delle Orascie) of the pro-
ceeds 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* Supposing, however, that with these ad-
ditions 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 !f What, then, must be the net receipts of all
the marketplaces 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
* At from twenty to thirty baiocchi, i.e. at about 1*. Sd. a pound,
t The population of Rome is only 154,000; that of Naples, 360,000; and
that of Venice, 180,000.


XVI
INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.
been purchased by exchange, and of the countless sums which
might have been earned in gathering them.*
* 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."—AtJienceum, Nov. 16, 1846.


ON THE
ESCULENT FUNGUSES
OF ENGLAND.
"Quos ipsa volentia rnra
Sponte tulere Bua carpsit."— Virgil.
"He culls from woods, and heights, and fields,
Those untaxed boons which nature yields."
ETYMOLOGIES.
By the word /1.V/C179, ijto? or ov, 6, whereof the usually re-
ceived root, (ivkos {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
fivKTjs as smut, bunt, mould, or dry-rot, have to do with our
table mushrooms. A like indefiniteness formerly charac-
terized the Latin word fungus, though it be now used in as
catholic a sense as that of fiv/cr)?; this, in the classic times
B


2
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
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,"*
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 Vossf 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 Agrip-
pina's orders and Locusta's cookery, of poisoning Claudius;
in memory of which event it is now called Amanita Ceesarea,
the Caesar'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-
* There are three kinds of esculent funguses in Italy to which the epithet
alius 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 unculti-
vated 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 JPratajolo, or meadow mushroom, or to that variety of it
called from its whiteness "boule de neige."
t Etymol. ad locum.


ETYMOLOGIES.
3
fancier himself, calls this "Boletus optirai cibi." Nero, in
playful allusion to his uncle's death, of which it was the occa-
sion, designates it the 'food of gods,' fipw^a deav; and Mar-
tial 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 f in another, "gold and silver
and dresses may be trusted to a messenger, but not a bole-
tus, (subaudi) because he will eat it on the way." This is the
only ancieut 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*—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 gene-
ral 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.f The word
tuber, though it occasionally (as in Juvenal) meant the truffle,
seems to have been used with considerable latitude. Thus
* Well-fed domestic pigs, on the authority o a friend, refuse it; but pos-
sibly, in the absence of full supplies of corn, they might be less dainty.
t Vittadini assures us that the "slips of dried boletus, sold on strings, are
as frequently from these kinds as from the Boletus edulis itself; notwith-
standing which, no accident was ever known to happen from the indiscriminate
use of either."
B 2


4
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
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
hydnvm is as little precise or discriminate as the last word;
for Theophrastus declares it to have a light bark, Xeio<f>Xoiov
elvai, in which case it is a puff-ball, while the plant called
vBvo<j>l\ov, 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* That which the Greeks
called misy, and the Romans the Libyan truffle, f 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
* 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-
harked, red truffle known to the ancients, to which the above remark of Dios-
corides 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.
+ The Thraeians are said to have intended this same misy under the new
epithet of Ktpaiviov, as though it were produced by thunder, unless indeed, as
in Theoph. lib. i. cap. ix., we should read xpaviov, 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.


ETYMOLOGIES.
5
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 aft-
fieaTaTov to eat—in which good report of it he is abundantly
borne out by the concurrent testimony of Nicander. What
Dioscorides meant by ayapiicov 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. Jubus Scaliger amuses himself at the expense of
Athenseus for saying that Agaricus is so called from the
country of Agaria, whence he would make out that it ori-
ginally came; whereas there never was such a country, his
Agaria being, like our Poiatia, only another synonym for
Fancy's fairyland.* i
* 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 con-
sult Pliny, lib. xvi. cap. 8, lib. xxii. cap. 23; Hist. Nat. Dioscorides, lib. iii.
cap. 78; Athenceus, lib. ii. in the Deipnosophisti; and after them Galen,
Clusius, Portse (Villa?, 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.


ETYMOLOGIES.
7
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,* 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 mat-
ter, 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.f
THE KANGE OF FUNGUS GEOWTHS.
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
» 'Trattati dei Eunghi.' Roma, 1804.
t Have not both the words Tode and the stool called after him some ety-
mological, as they have undoubtedly a fanciful, connection with the word tod,
deuth?


ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
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 em-
brace): the Mucor mucedo, that spawns upon our dried pre-
serves; the Ascophora mucedo, that makes our bread mouldy
(" mucidse frustra farinse"*); 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 fun-
guses! So is the grey Monilia, that rots, and then fattens
upon, our fruits; and the Mucor herbariorwn, 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 pur-
pose, the Agaricus adustus; the Mucorf chrysosperrnus, which
* Juvenal.
+ Few minute objects are more beautiful than certain of these mucedinous
fungi ftmgorum. A common one besets the back of some of the Russulce 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. TJnder
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.


THEIR EXTENT.
9
attacks the flesh of a particular Boletus; the Sclerotium cor-
nutum, 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 sur-
face 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* festoons its ceiling, shags its walls, and
wraps its thick coat round our wine-casks, f keeping our oldest
wine in closest bond; while the Geastrum, aspiring occasion-
ally to leave this earth, has been found suspended, like Ma-
homet's coffin, between it and the stars, on the very highest
pinnacle of St. Paul's. % The close cavities of nuts occasion-
ally 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,
* Vide the London Docks, passim; where he pays his unwelcome visits, and
is in even worse odour than the exciseman.
t "Sir Joseph Banks having a cask of wine, rather too sweet for immediate
use, he directed that it should he placed in a cellar, that the saccharine it con-
tained 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 com-
pletely 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.
% Withering found one of these plants on the top of St. Paul's Cathedral;
the first ho had seen!


FORM, COLOUR, ETC.
11
what modifications of 'soft' and 'hard' convey an adequate
knowledge of all their various erases 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;* these assume the shape of
a cup,f and those of a wine-funnel;% some, like A. mam-
moms, have a teat; others, like the A. clypeolarius, are um-
bonated at their centre; these are stilted upon a high leg, §
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;|| 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,^f 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
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.
* The Mitrati are not a very numerous class, of which the Morel may be
taken as the type.
t The Cupidati, so called in consequence.
J A. piperatvg. § A. procerus.
|| Agwicus comatus, in allusion no doubt to which Plautus says of the Lord
Chancellor of his day, "Fmigino genere est, capiti se totum tegit,"—that his
wig was so long as to hide his whole person.
IT The Nidulariaa do so.


12
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
JucUb), 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,* 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 Ccesareus, 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 con-
centric 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 ;f these have a rich vel-
vety, 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.
* The surface is rough with elevated papilla;, 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.
t A. micaceus.


ODOURS AND TASTES.
13
ODOURS AND TASTES.
Both one and the other are far more numerous iu 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 mis-
take taken one of the former into his bedroom; he was soon
awakened by an intolerable foetor, and was glad to open his
window and get rid of it, as he hoped, and the Phallus toge-
ther. Here he was disappointed; "sublata causa non tollitur
effectus," the foetor 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 com-
plete 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.* Batsch has described an
Agaricf of so powerful and peculiar a smell, that before he
could finish his picture (for he was drawing it) a violent head-
ache made him desist, "vehementi afficiebar capitis dolore."
Of the others, some are graveolent in a savoury or in an un-
savoury sense. This smells strong of onions,! that of cinna-
* Thore. t Agaricus narcoticus, Batsch, Fascio. toI. ii. pi. 81.
J A. alliaceus.


14
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
mon,* from which it takes its name; the A. ostreatus (auct.
nost.) most powerfully of Tarragon; A. odoratus, and the Can-
tharellus, 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 Pietrafanghaia, filled with the spores of its own Poly-
porus, is without smell. When fresh, there is scarcely any
perceptible odour in Boletus edulis or B. luridus, nor yet in
the A. Casareus 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 OE 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
* A. cinnamomeui.


EXPANSIVE POWER OF GROWTH.
15
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 cease-
less 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 con-
spiracy 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 barba-
rians gave up as impracticable, and the pickaxe of theBarberini
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


16
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OP ENGLAND.
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 re-
moved. Vittadini found that when the tubes of a Boletus
were cut out from a growing plant, they were after a time re-
produced. 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.*
MOTION.
In a recent work on 'Insect Life/ I have discoursed some-
what 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
* Fries.


MOTION.
17
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 ad-
hering to their sides, which I take to be the seeds, and I ob-
served 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 injiata,
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."* "The Vibrissea truncorum,
taken from water and exposed to the rays of the sun, though
at first smooth, is soon covered with white geniculated fila-
ments, which start from the hymenium, and have an oscillating
motion."f The Pilobolus, of which so accurate an account
has been given us by the great Florentine mycologists casts,
* Bolton. t Persoon. % Micheli.


18
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
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.*
"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 shi-
ning 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.'f
DIMENSIONS.
Most funguses do not present great anomalies in their size,
* 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.
t "One dark night, about the beginning of December, while passing along
the streets of the Villa de Natividade, I observed some boys amusing them-
selves 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 phospho-
rescent 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 Pyro-
somce; from this circumstance, and from growing on a palm, it is called by the
inhabitants ' Flor do Cocothe 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 Bev. M. J. Berkeley
under the name of Agaricus Oardneri, from preserved specimens which I
brought home."—Travels in the Interior of Brazil, 1846.


DIMENSIONS.
19
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,* or exceed it. Mr. Berkeley quotes the case of a Poly-
porus 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. Clusiusf 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. PortaJ also alludes
as that called gallinace^ 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. || Bolton,
* Hence it was called Kpaviov {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 Uteris 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. Hoi. vol. xxvii. cap. 5) speak of
puff-balls of sixty and one hundred pounds weight.
t Hist. Plant, vol. ii. p. 275.
J YOke, Lib. vol. x. cap. 80.
§ By this word, however, the vulgar generally understood the Caniharellun
ciharius.
|| This species, which is somewhat rare in England, occurred in abundance
C 8


20
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
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 addi-
tion 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
this year (1847) in the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells. I found four speci-
mens 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.


USES.
23
The Polyporus squamosus makes a razor-strop far superior
to any of those at present patented, and sold, with high-sound-
ing epithets, far beyond their deserts. To prepare the Poly-
porus 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 care-
fully 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;* and it is not a little remarkable
that so useful an invention should, in an age of puffing, adver-
tisement, 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 Kam-
tchatka, in decoction with the Epilobium angustifolium, as an
intoxicating liquor.f The Laplanders smear it on the walls
and bedposts of their dwellings, to destroy bugs (Linn.); and
that it is also eaten when young; but I cannot speak of it from personal ex-
perience :—" In prima eta mangiasi colto di fresco affettato e condito d'ogni
modo; Bpecialmente nelle provincie di Belluno ed Udine, o salasi per la
quadragesima."
* "Di questo fungo servavanosene i barbieri in cambio dello strugghie dette
piu volgaremente codelte, atte a far riprendere il perduto filo a loro rasoi."
f "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 mush-
room, 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."—Bees's Cyclofcedia,
art. "Agaric"


24
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
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, exclu-
sive 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.* 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."
* In such cases the minute fungus is probably absorbed in ovo and dis-
seminated 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.


MEDICAL USES.
25
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.*
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 Poh/porus 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.f 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 prseconized 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
* 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.
t 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.


E8CULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
while it is certainly to be regretted that the absence of stetho-
scopic indications should prevent our having any positive evi-
dence 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 instruc-
tive. "A young man, setat. twenty-one, was seized at the
beginning of autumn with inflammatory cough and hsemo-
ptysis, 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 diarrhoea.
A teaspoonful of an electuary of the P. suaveolens in honey
was given him three times a day, and nothing else; and, ex-
traordinary 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 re-
covered."*
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 hyperca-
* Enslin was in the habit of uniting this Polyporus with Peruvian Bark,
and obtained from it the happiest results: "Omnium mini arridet eonnubium
ejus cum eortice Peruviano"—to which "eonnubium," no doubt, some of its
good effects are to be attributed.


AN AETICLE OP DIET.
27
tharsis 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 hypercathar-
tic properties. To judge from this single case, which, how-
ever, tallies with the experience of others, I should say that
this fungus was, in medicine, to be looked upon as a very
suspicious ally.* 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 valu-
able 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;
Aretaeus has somewhere quaintly, but not unaptly, called it
the "house of Plato;" in another place he speaks of it as the
"seat" (as if /car' e£o%^v) "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
* 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.


ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
sympathies by nervous attachments, both of "continuity"
and of " contiguity,"* 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 par-
ticularly, the stomach has received marked attention, ranking
in that country as the most noble of the viscera.f Even in
those republican times when no other rights were held sacred
throughout France, the privileges of the stomach were re-
spected; 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."J 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.§ In France, the
dinner is the thought of the morning, and sometimes the
business of the day, but in France everybody dines; in Eng-
land, where the word 'dinner' never occurs till it is announced,
* Hunter.
t It is the Frenchman's heart.' "tPai mal au coeur" 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'!
J Walpole.
§ 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 pro-
position.


AN ARTICLE OF DIET.
29
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 Con-
tinental neighbours; it is simply that they want skill in pre-
paring 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."*
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 ostra-
cized 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 medecin Tant Pis," would fre-
quently proscribe the very things that his rival, "Le medecin
Tant Mieux," had just been recommending. When men
* 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.


30
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
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 regime, became only the more hypo-
chondriacal for their pains.
None but a determined theorist* 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 en-
lightened, self-educated public, that can read Liebig and
thoroughly appreciate its own case, hold out much encourage-
ment 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'f has received its last plaudits;
already has Crabbe's euthanasia to this class of authors
attained its full accomplishment:—
"Te 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,
* "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."—Crdbbe.
f Broussais divides inflammatory dyspepsia into jive parts or acta. 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 mortifica-
tion 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 inno-
cent bloodahedding as Napoleon himself, and used to kill his patients that his
leeches might be fed!


AN article: op diet.
81
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 fun-
gus. What diatribes against it might be cited from the works
of Athenaeus, Dioscorides, Galen, Pliny, the Arabian phy-
sicians, and all their commentators! What terrible recitals,
too, of poisoning from some few species have been indus-
triously 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; "* thus too
Allen and Batarra pen unsolicited apages,\ 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; % 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 fxdsse fungwm 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
* "Fungus qualiscunque sit semper malignus."—Kirker, Lib. de Pest,
f "Apage ergo perniciosa istheec guiae blandimenta."
J "Quot colores tot dolores, quot species tot pernicies."


32
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
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 ser-
vice has been rendered to the public by Paulet, Persoon,
Cordier, and Roques, * 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 Schwaegrichen suffice, who tells us, that on seeing the
peasants about Nuremberg eating raw mushrooms,f 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
* 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.
t "To eat raw mushrooms" was a proverbial expression among the Greeks,
as is shown by the passage which Athenaeus quotes out of a play of Antiphanes,
called the ' Proverbs':—"Eyu yhp ttv tuv iy.erfpav tpdyotfii rt, /iwojtos wfioi/s


AN ARTICLE OF DIET.
33
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.* 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.f "You must assist nature," Hippocrates says,
* Those who themselves know better, smile to read such passages as the
following, which is to be found in old Q-erard's ' Herbal':—" Galen affirms that
they (/. e. funguses) are all very cold and moist, and therefore do approach unto
a venomous and mothering facultie, and engender a clammy and pituitous nutri-
ment; if eaten, therefore, I give my advice unto those that love such strango
and new-fangled meates, to beware of licking honey among thorns, lest the sweet-
nesse of the one do not countervaille the sharpnesse and pricking of the other."
t 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 indi-
gestion in ragout, 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.
D


34
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
"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.* Cooks therefore make
mixed dishes, and he who should always make the same dish
would deservedly pass for not being a cook at all."f And
though Sydenham, in apparent discordance with this, recom-
mends 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.J Nine-tenths of
* *Hk 5e 7ti£cto ifioia iroiir) ovk exft fepifw. n.A. A. 10.
t 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 He dines unscathed, who dines (done I
Plain boiled and roast discreetly bound; Or shuns abroad those corner dishes;
Content to feed on homely fare. No Roman garlics make him groan,
On British ground 1 Nor matelotte fishes.
Sound sleep renounces sugared peas !— Then let not Verey's treacherous skill,
No nightmares haunt the modest ration Nor Vefour*s, try thy peptic forces;
Of tender bteak, that yield's with ease One comes to swallow many a pill
To mastication! Where many a course is I
From stews and steams that round them play, With mushroomed dishes oeaso to strive;
How many a tempting dish would floor us, Nor for that truffled crime inquire,
Had nature made no toll to pay Whioh nails the hapless goose alive,
At the pylorus 1 At Strasburg's fire.
J 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


AN ARTICLE OF DIET. 35
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
sequo 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 a discretion.
"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
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.
D 2


36
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
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." * 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?
Tour 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 oure ?—but one: Mefrain!
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 fipwfia dewv, they should
* Eoqucs, 'Traite sur les Champignons,'


AN ARTICLE OF DIET.
37
meet with the fate of the Emperor Claudius, and prefer re-
maining 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. "Coelum non
animum mutatov yap tov rpoirov iXKa toy tottov fiovov
fieTrfWaga.* That the mushroom is not quite so wholesome
when cultivated as it is in the meadow,f in a state of nature,
cannot be doubted; J 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
* iEschines.
t "Pratensibus optima fungis Natura est."—Horace.
% 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; fruite vary with the soil; are potatoes everywhere the same?


38
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
and becomes poisonous like the toadstool.* It has been
unwarily asserted, that because the people of the north are in
the habit of employing in their kitchen the Agaricus musca-
rius, which is known to be poisonous in the south, this points
to some remarkable difference in the plant depending on dif-
ference 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 re-
citals in various mycological works; and only not more fre-
quently 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 mushr
room (Ag. campestris) varies considerably both as to flavour
and wholesomeness (circumstances attributable in part to the
varieties of soil in which it flourishes f), 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 Eng-
land as they are in Erance, Switzerland, or Italy. Thus the
* Persons have fancied themselves poisoned when they were not 5 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 poison-
ing. "Tou have saved my life," Bays 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 ho knows more about mushrooms
than anybody else can tell him.
t It grows not only throughout Europe, but in India also.


AN ARTICLE OF DIET.
39
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 par-
ticular 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 dis-
criminate, 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 fun-
gus which some of them assert to be esculent, some doubtful,
and others altogether poisonous in its qualities. Such dis-
crepancies, however, have already in many cases been satis-
factorily adjusted, whilst a more minute attention and cor-
responding improvement in the pictorial representation of
species is daily diminishing the errors of the older myco-
logists.
Admitting then, what there is no gainsaying, the existence
of many dangerous individuals in this family,* ought we not,
in a matter of such importance, rather to apply ourselves to
the task of discriminating them accuratelyf than permit idle
* We Bhould 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?
t "N'est-il pas bien plus simple et bien plus sur en meme temps, puisqu'on
le petit, de prevenir les maux, que de speculer sur les moyens si souvent incer-
tains de les guerir ?"—Bull. PI. Venen. p. 11.


40
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
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 OP 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 agreeable-
ness 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;"* but though the
strong peculiar smell exhaled by this and some other esculent
funguses is anything but a perfume, a3 we apprehend the
term, it is very different from that intolerable foetor, that
nauseous overwhelming odour given out by the Phallus impu-
dicus, 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 ne-
gative 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
* Vide Vittadini and Koques.


MODES OP DISTINGUISHING.
41
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.
lactifiuus aureus), though in high request in their respective
localities, and really delicate themselves, arc akin- to others
whose milks, though they may have the colour of gold, have
the qualities of gamboge.
"Nescius aura;
Fallacis,
Qui nunc to fruitur credulus aurea I"
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
zone;" 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.* 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.-f The
* 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 Sgdnunt repandum,
to which it bears some slight resemblance in colour, and in nothing else.
t 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.


MODES OF DISTINGUISHING.
43
periculo ventris nosiri, 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 per-
haps 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 * 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 deter-
mine 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,
* 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.


44
ESCULENT FCNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
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,* 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.f
The effects produced by the poison of mushrooms are ex-
ceedingly 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 affec-
tions 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." J Not unfrequently, as
in those cases cited by Larber, the symptoms have been alto-
gether those of cholera, without any cerebral disturbance what-
* As was known to the Greeks, 'Prepare your funguses with vinegar, salt,
or honey, for thus you will rob them of their poison,' ovra yhp avrav rh
irviydfies iupaipurai,
t Vittadini, however, ate largely of this fungus, which he describes as very
disagreeable, though it did not prove poisonous to him.
I Puccinelli.


CONDITIONS OF GROWTH.
rooms, 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.' Cesal-
pinus 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 trans-
ferring 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 pro-
perly 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.*
* The reader desirous of a detailed account of this interesting fungus,
should consult a small quarto brochwre published some years ago, by Pro-
E


CONDITIONS OF GROWTH. 51
excellent to eat; while their profusion is sometimes so great,
as entirely to hide the wood from which they spring.* 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 some-
thing 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 un-
successful 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 at-
tempts generally failed. My friend Mrs. Hussey, in par-
ticular, acquaints me that she has been in the habit of sub-
jecting many plants to a like experiment, and with similar
want of result. Lastly, as concerning truffles, Mr. Born-
holtz 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
be, "with oak leaves in decay; you must also mix some iron
with it and take care to make it of a proper consistence, either
* 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."
E 2


52 ESCULENT FUNGUSES OP ENGLAND.
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 Car-
pinus 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 our-
selves 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


FAIRY RINGS.
53
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.*
ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF FUNGUSES.
"Ins Innre der Natur dringt kein erschaffner Geist,
Zu gliicklich wem sie nur die aussre Schale loast."—Mailer.
It would be an insult to the reader's understanding, and a
most idle waste of his time, to attempt to confute such self-
* 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


54
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
destroying dogmas as those of "spontaneous " or of " equi-
vocal" generation, which last is only a clumsy equivoque ex-
pressive 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 objec-
tion 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 in-
teresting 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 mitri-
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.


DEVELOPMENT.
55
tion, 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 hodily 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 can-
not, 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 fre-
quently 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 par-
ticular 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 develop-
ment is to be effected? Some writers take one view, some
another. Many believe the seeds of funguses to come directly


56
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
from the earth,* 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 par-
ticular 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 nourishing 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 en-
* This was the opinion of the Greeks, who Called funguses yrfyeveti, or
earthborn.


DEVELOPMENT.
57
thralled 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.* 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,
* Just as in the inorganic world, chemical analysis is frequently the precur-
sor 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 con-
sequence of a beautiful pre-arrangement, find there all the requisite supplies for
their growth and future maintenance.


58
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
some mycologists have separated funguses from the family of
the clandestinely married Cryptogamia, to place them with the
Agamia, which repudiate the marriage tie ;* but as every ar-
gument 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.
SPOBES OB SEEDS.
All funguses have not seeds,—at least, seeds apparent to us ;f
but if we reflect that these, even where visible, can do no more
than present to our senses the visible tabernacle of that life
* Some mycologists however, as Persoon and Eoques, conceive that the com-
mon 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.
t Several byssoid growths are in this predicament.


SPORES OK SEEDS.
59
which is still invisible, and which, not being material, must
ever elude our search,* then it will not appear so difficult to
conceive that the apparently seedless threads of some par-
ticular 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 Agyriurn, 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, ob-
long, 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 dimen-
sions of the future plant. They vary, too, greatly in colour,
being sometimes of a pure white, and continuing so through-
out 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. f 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 thecce, the latter sporanges; thecee (which are
in shape similar to the cases of the same name that used to
receive the ancient eiXfyfuiTa, or scrolls) are small, cylindrical
* "Who seek for life in creatures they dissect,
Will lose it in the moment they detect."—Pope.
+ 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.


GO
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
bodies, in which the seeds lie one over the other, as in a rou-
leau; 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 thecse, or par aphyses, between those that
are fertile. Sporanges are little globose or turbinated recep-
tacles, frequently furnished with a pedicle, in which the seeds
lie without order, as they are themselves inserted symmetri-
cally, 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 Helvellse 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 deli-
quescent kind, return to the earth mixed up with the black
liquid into which these ultimately resolve themselves. Some-
times 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
Pezizce, 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
eapable of altering their forms, and that according to the ac-
cidents 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


DEVELOPMENT OF SEEDS.
63
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 up-
wards, carrying along with it the bag, which, on reaching the
surface of the ground, bursts its envelopes and scatters its pro-
lific dust to the winds. All funguses, as has already been ob-
served, have in all probability spores, though in a few instances,
of byssoid growths, (Hyphas, Himantias, and iEthelias,) 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 vfirjv, a membrane, and pvicos, a
fungus;. i. e. funguses with a seed membrane: to distinguish
them from those other kinds, very small numerically in pro-
portion to themselves, Gasteromycetes, in which the seeds, ar-
ranged and stored away in particular receptacles, named spo-
ranges or thecae, are with them included in the belly {yacrrqp)
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 Dadalea; now
rising into little rough eminences on the surface of the Thele-
phorce, and now affording a smooth investment to that of the
Clavarice. 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 thecae.


G4
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
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 com-
pletely while they also serve to attach it to the place of its
birth; these threads (like the spongioles attached to the roots
of phsenogamous 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 fun-
gus 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 uncon-
nectedly, as in the Pietra funghaia, affecting certain spots
only, which become so many small matrices whereof each fur-
nishes a crop. The union of many germinating granules to-
gether with their connecting threads, constitutes mushroom
spawn, or, as it is technically called, carcytes* 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
* "The facility with which these floccose threads are injured, and their con-
nection destroyed, explains," says Vittadini, "the difficulty of transplanting
funguses with success."


DEVELOPMENT OF THE SPORES.
65
vast variety of forms, (whereof each particular one is pre-
determined 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 to-
wards its centre the rudiments of the young fungus; of which
the receptacle appears first, and all the other parts in succes-
sion. 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 pre-
sents at its apex the rudiments of a receptacle or head; by
degrees, and frequently by slow degrees,* the perfected struc-
tures 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
* 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.
F


OF THE ANNULUS, ETC.
67
The Ring.—This, which diners considerably in form, sub-
stance, and in its attachments, is composed either of a con-
tinuous sheet of membrane or else of a number of delicately-
spun threads, resembling a spider's web,* 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 en-
tirely broken up, and exhibits those well-known flocks, which
have been called by the learned verruca, 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
* In the first instance the fungus is called annulate, in the second corti-
nate.
V 2


68
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
scald-heads. Where there has been both a volva and a velum,
as sometimes happens in the same fungus, these verrucse are
of different colours according as they are remnants of the
first merely, or of both together.* The velum in the sub-
genus 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 membranace-
ous 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 fun-
guses 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 ter-
minate. It assumes a great variety of forms, which serve in
many instances to characterize species; besides which pecu-
liarities there are others to be noted, as the mode of its inser-
tion into the pileus, its having or not having a ring, the cir-
cumstance of its being scabrous, glossy, or tomentose, reticu-
lated, 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 men-
tioned in this work have a pileus, or cap; all such belong to
the first great tribe Pileati; they include the genera Aga-
ricus, Boletus, Cantharellus, Morchella, Hydnum, Fistulina, and
* 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.


70
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
stem; emarginate (emarginatce) when they are obtusely notched
or hollowed out posteriorly; denticulate {denticulate) when
connected by means of a tooth; equal (cequales) when all of
the same length; forked (furcatce) and branched (ramosce)
when they divide in their course, once, or more frequently, or
are connected at the sides with the imperfect gills; dedalean
(dcedalece) when they anastomose irregularly together; simple
(simplices) when they are free from all connections; distant
(distantes) when they are few and wide apart; close (confertai)
when they are very numerous and touch each other; serrated
(serratce) when notched like a saw; waved (undulatce) when
the margin is undulating; and imbricating (imbricates) 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 hyme-
nium; 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: Venae, Plicae.—The plaits of the Chanterelle


OF THE ANNULUS, ETC.
71
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 (plicee) 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 papillse invested by the hyme-
nium, 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 inter-
nally in the members of the second. The funguses described
in the present work belong chiefly to the first division, Hyme-
nomycetes; 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


CLASSIFICATION.
78
hard coriaceous funguses growing on trees (while the word
Fungus did imperfect duty for this genus), was next arbitrarily
made by Linnseus to stand representative for such only as
had gills, "fungi lamellati terrestres et arborei."* 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 an-
other, Dcedalea, 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 dis-
crimination of species which was wholly unattainable before
his time. His first grand series of Agarics comprehends those
of white spores (LiEucospoRit), and of this his first section is—
Subgenus 1. Amanita. J
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 verrucse. 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.
* Eaii Syn. 2. t Aeuicbs, white, and air6pos, a seed.
% Ag. ovoides (Bull.), which is white, and Ag. Cmsareus (Scop.), which is
red, with yellow gills, belong to this division.


CLASSIFICATION. 75
pileus; * 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.t
Esculent species: none.
Subgenus 5. Tricholoma.J
Bot. Char. Veil fibrous or floccose, fugacious; stalk gene-
rally 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, emar-
ginate; flesh white and unchangeable.
Esculent species: Ag. prunulus and Ag. personatus.§
Subgenus 6. Russula|| (Scop.).
Bot. Char. No veil; stem smooth, equal, glabrous, strong,
white, spongy within; pileus at first campanulate, then hemi-
spherical, 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,
* 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.
t Limax, a slug. J flplf, a hair, and \u/ia, a fringe.
§ Not described by Vittadini among the esculent funguses of Italy, and so
probably unknown there.
|| Russulus, red.


CLASSIFICATION.
77
Subdivision Chondropodes.* Pileus tough, dry, gills nearly
free, close, white, external coat of stem subcartilaginous.
Esculent species: Ag. fusipes.
Subdivision Scortei. Pileus subcoriaceous; gills free, sub-
'distant.
Esculent species: Ag. oreades.
Subgenus 9. CoLLYBiA.f
Esculent species: none.
Subgenus 10. Mycena.J
Esculent species: none. s
Subgenus 11. Omphalia.§
Esculent species: none.
Subgenus 12. Pleuropus.||
Bot. Char. Pileus unequal, eccentric or lateral; stem, when
present, solid and firm; gills unequal, juiceless, unchange-
able, acute behind, growing on trees or wood; for the most
part innocuous, but two only generally eaten.
Esculent species: Ag. ostreatus, in the subdivision Con-
charia; and Ag. ulmarius, in the subdivision jEgeritaria.
Series 2. HYPORHODEUS.^
Sporules pale rose-colour.
Subgenus 13. Clitopilus.**
Bot. Char. Veil none; stem tolerably firm, subequal, dis-
* x<Wp0I, a ligament, and tous, a foot. + k60os, a copper coin.
J Hvicns, a fungus. § o/.i<pos, umbilicus.
|| irXtvphv, a side, and tovs, a foot. T inch, under, and pittos, rose-coloured.
** k\i'tos, a declivity, and ttTXos, a cap.


78
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
tinct 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.*
Esculent species: none.
Subgenus 15. NoLANEA.f
Esculent species: none.
Subgenus 16. Eccilia.J
Esculent species: none.
Series 3. CORTINARIA.§
Sporules reddish-ochre; veil arachnoid.
Subgenus 17. Telamonia.||
Esculent species: none.
Subgenus 18. Inoloma.^[
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.
* Xfirrbj, slender.
J inK0iK6w, to hollow out.
|| Tffikv, lint.
t Nola, a little bell.
§ Cortina, a veil.
IT Ms, of a fibre, Atefia, & fringe.


CLASSIFICATION.
79
Subgenus 19. Dermocybe.*
Bot. Char. Veil dry, arachnoid, very fugacious; stem not
truly bulbous, fibrillose, stuffed when young; pileus clothed
with fibrillar, 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. Pho-
liota, Myxacium, Hebeloma, Flammula, Inocybe, Naucoria,
Galera, Tapinia, and Crepidotus, there are no esculent
species.]
Series 5. PRATELLA.t
Bot. Char. Veil not arachnoid; gills changing colour,
clouded, at length dissolving; sporidia brown-purple.
Subgenus 29. Volvaria.
Esculent species: none.
Subgenus 30. Psaliota.J
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 un-
equal, 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.
* Sippa, a skin, and kvJSJ), a head.
f Pratitm, a pasture. J ^i\iov, a ring.


80
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
[In the four next subgenera, from 31 to 34, Hypkoloma,
Psilocybe, Psathyra, and Coprinarius, there are no esculent
species.]
Subgenus 35. Coprinus.*
Bot. Char. Gills free, unequal, thin, simple, changing
colour, at length deliquescent. Veil universal, floccose, fu-
gacious; stem fistulose, straight, elongated, brittle, subsqua-
mulose, 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.f
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, eccen-
tric, or wanting; no investments; dust white.
Esculent species: C. cibarius.
[In the next three genera, Merulius, Schizophyllum, and
Dcedalea, there are no esculent species.]
* Koirpos, dung.
t xdvBapos, a dtp.


CLASSIF[CATION.
81
Genus 6. POLYPORUS*
Bot. Char. Hymenium concrete with the substance of the
pileus, consisting of subrotund pores with thin simple dissepi-
ments.
Esculent species: P. frondosus.
Genus 7. BOLETUS.f
Bot. Char. The word Boletus, which has at different times,
and under different mycologists, been made to represent in
turn many very different funguses, is now restricted to such
as have a soft flesh, vertical tubes underneath, round or an-
gular, slightly connected together and with the substance of
the pileus, open below, and lined by the sporiferous mem-
brane; the cap horizontal, very fleshy, the stalk generally
reticulated, some have an investment; the flesh of many
changes colour.
They are all innocuous, according to Vittadini, which is
not strictly the case, though many species hitherto reputed
unwholesome, or worse, appear to lose their bad properties by
drying. The kinds generally eaten are B. edulis and scaber.
Genus 8. FISTULINA.J
Bot. Char. Hymenium formed of a distinct substance, but
concrete with the fibres of the pileus; tubes at first wart-like,
somewhat remote, radiato-fimbriate, closed; at length ap-
proximated, elongated, open.
Esculent species: F. hepatica.
* iros, many, and iripos, a pore. t fiaKos, a ball.
{ Named from the fistulous nature of the hymenium.
G


82
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
Genus 9. HYDNUM.*
Bot. Char. In this genus the under surface presents a series
of conical teeth or bristles of unequal length, solid, continuous
with the flesh of the pileus and covered entirely by the spo-
riferous membrane. The species composing it have no in-
vestments; the flesh is dry, frequently corky or coriaceous;
the pileus irregular in shape, and its margin arched and un-
dulated. There are no dangerous species, but which to eat
must depend upon the united consent of the stomach and of
the teeth.
Esculent species: H. repandum.
[In the last five genera of this tribe, namely, Sistotrema,
Irpex, Radulum, Phlebia, and Thelephora, there are no escu-
lent species.]
Tribe 2. CLAVATI.f
Hymenium above, smooth; receptacle club-shaped or cylin-
drical, with no distinct margin; substance fleshy.
Genus 15. CLAVARIA.
Bot. Char. Receptacle erect, homogeneous, smooth, not dis-
tinguishable from the stalk, simple or entirely covered by the
hymenium.
All the species in this genus are good to eat.
[In the remaining six genera of this tribe there are no
esculent species.]
vtivov, a truffle, etc.
t Clava, a club.


CLASSIFICATION.
83
Tribe 3. MITRATI.
Receptacle bullate, pileiform, margined; hymenium superior,
never closed.
Genus 22. MORCHELLA.
Bot. Char. Receptacle hollow and confluent with stalk,
club-shaped, or, like the pileus, fissured above with lacunse
more or less deep, limited by thick folds, anastomosed with
reticulations, entirely covered with sporiferous membrane;
flesh waxy in texture; stalk constant.
There are two esculent kinds, M. esculenta and semilibera;
the esculenta and hybrida of Sowerby.
Genus 23. HELVELLA.
Bot. Char. Substance fleshy; margins sinuous; only the
upper portion of the pileus sporiferous.
Esculent species: H. crispa, lacunosa, and esculenta.
[In Genera 24 to 26 there are no esculent species.]
Tribe 4. CUPULATI.
Hymenium concrete, superior, smooth, shut in while young
by the margins of the receptacle; sporules disseminated with
elasticity or otherwise; receptacle bowl-shaped, flat or con-
cave; some of this tribe when young have an involucrum.
Genus 27. PEZIZA.
Series Aleukia. Subgenus Megalopyxis.
Esculent species: P. acetabulum.
[In Genera 28 to 45, which conclude the first great division,
Hymenomycetes, there are no esculent species.]
G 2


84
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
Division II. GASTEROMYCETES.
Bot. Char. The receptacle a close cavity with or without a
hymenium; spores at last free and variously disseminated.
[In Genera 46 to 73 there are no esculent species.]
Genus 74. BOVISTA*
Bot. Char. Peridium papyraceous, furnished with a distinct
back, which at length peels off altogether, fertile within; ca-
pillitium equal.
Esculent species: B. plumbea.
Genus 75. LYCOPERDON.
Bot. Char. A sessile peridium, membranaceous; at first
filled with a white, consistent, homogeneous substance, which
after a time is converted into a dust of various hues, and is
interspersed with copious filaments. The funguses of this
genus are invested in two membranes; the innermost of which,
or peridium, is tough and smooth on the outside, shaggy with
floccose threads within. The external membrane, which is
very fragile and tender, frequently falls off during the matura-
tion of the seed, which then escapes through the peridium by
an irregular orifice at the apex.
Esculent species: L. plumbeum and Bovista.
* Name Latinized from the German Bofisi.


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
8a
AGARICUS PRUNULUS, Vitt.
Plate I. Fig. 1.
Subgenus Tricholoma, Fries. Subdivision Personata, ibid.
Agabicus MOUCEEON, Bulliard. Ccesalpinus, p. 617.
Moucebon GBis, Paulet, Persoon.
"Cogitatione ante pascuntur succineis novaculis aut argenteo appa-
ratu comitante."—Pliny.
"Tout ce qui fait l'ornement des festins s'embaume du parfum de
ces cryptogames."—Persoon.
Bot. Char. Gregarious, or growing in rings* on the
ground; pileus thick, convex, irregular in shape, more or less
tuberculated, sometimes lobed;f margin not striate, wavy, ex-
panding unequally; epidermis cream-coloured, grey, reddish,
or of a dirty nankeen hue, paler towards the circumference,
soft to the touch like kid, minutely tomentose, fragile, dry,
firmly attached to the flesh ; flesh firm, compact; gills watery,
white, very numerous, irregular, with many smaller ones
(from 5-11, Vitt.) interposed, lying over each other like the
plaits of a frill, adnato-emarginate,f the imperfect gills
rounded off at their posterior end. Stem white, robust, firm,
solid, somewhat irregular in form, generally thickened at the
base, constantly so in young specimens, but in older ones,
* 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.
+ 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.
X That is, connected by a tooth to the end of the stalk, and not running
down it.


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
87
farmer, quite ignorant, of course, of their value; to which the
following extract from a letter of Professor Balbi to Persoon
bears testimony:—" This rare and most delicious Agaric, the
Mouceron of Bulliard, and the Ag. prunulus of other authors,
abounds on the hills above the valley of Stafora, near Bobbio,
where it is called Spinaroli, and is in great request; the coun-
try people eat it fresh in a variety of ways, or they dry and
sell it for from twelve to sixteen francs a pound." Vittadini
says, truly enough, that the fresh is better than the dried
Prunulus, the substance of the latter being rather coriaceous,
but the gravy prepared from it in this state, being very rich
and well-flavoured, is largely used by those who reject the
body of the mushroom; three or four thrown into a pot of
the lighter broths or of beef-tea render them more savoury.
To dry the Prunulus it is usual to cut it into four or more
pieces, which are exposed for some days to a dry air and then
threaded: it acquires an aroma by the process, and communi-
cates this to any dish of which it is afterwards an ingredient.
It would be extremely difficult to confound this Agaric
with any other; its mode of growth in circles, the extreme
narrowness of its gills, which are moreover striate, the thick-
ness of its pileus, and the bulging character of its stalk,
would render a mistake almost impossible, even did it grow
in autumn when other funguses abound, in place of appear-
ing only in spring when few species comparatively abound.
The best mode of cooking the Ag. prunulus is either in a
mince or fricassee it with any sort of meat, or in a vol-au-vent,
the flavour of which it greatly improves; or simply prepared
with salt, pepper, and a small piece of bacon, lard, or butter,
to prevent burning, it constitutes of itself a most excellent
dish. It has the great advantage of appearing in spring, at a
season the common mushroom never occurs. I have placed


88
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
it first in the series of Plates, as being the most savoury
fungus with which I am acquainted.*
"When eaten alone, Sterbeck's white mustard will be found
an excellent condiment for it; this is prepared as follows:—
Bruise in a mortar some sweet almonds with a little water,
then add salt, pepper, and some lemon-juice, rub together till
the whole is of the consistence of common mustard.
AGARICUS PROCERUS, Scop.
Plate II.
Subgenus Lepiota, Fries.
"Elle est d'une saveur tres-agreable et d'une chair tendre, tres-
delicate et tres-bonne a manger. Les amateurs la preftrent m6me
au champignon de couche, comme ayant une chair plus fine et etant
beaucoup plus legere sur l'estomac."-—Paulet.
This, which is one of the most delicate funguses, fortu-
nately is not rare in England. In Italy it is in -equal request
with the Amanita Ceesarea; in France it is also in high es-
teem,—" servie sur toutes les tables, elle est bonne a toute
sauce" (Thore); and were its excellent qualities better known
here, they could not fail to secure it a general reception into
our best kitchens, and a frequent place among our side-dishes
at table. The beauty and remarkable appearance of this
Agaric have procured for it a variety of names: colubrinus,
from the snake-like markings on the stem; clypealus, from
* 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.


90
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
under surface. The smell is like that of newly-ground meal;
the taste is pleasant; the spores are white and elliptic.
The Ag. excoriatus resembles the Ag. procerus very closely,
but is easily distinguished from it by its smaller size, the ab-
sence of the bulb at the base of the stalk, and the ring being
often attached instead of free.
Being equally esculent, the following receipts will serve for
both :—
"Comme il est tres-leger et tres-delicat, il faut le faire
sauter dans l'huile fine apres l'avoir assaisonne d'un point
d'ail, de poivre et de sel; en quelques instants il est cuit. On
le mange aussi en fricassee de poulet, cuit sur le gril ou dans
la tourtiere avec de beurre, de fines herbes, du poivre, du sel,
et de la chapelure de pain; on ne mange point la tige, elle est
d'une texture coriace" (Rogues).
The ketchup from both kinds i3 better than that procured
from the Agaricus carnpestris, or common mushroom.
N.B.—I have in the above notice described one variety of Agaricus procerus;
there is, however, if not another, at least a remarkable modification of this, in
which the pileus is thinner and much less shaggy, the gills less broad but similar
in shape, the stalk more slender and elongate. This variety is also nearly void
of odour, and Us flesh does not change colour on being bruised: for culinary
purposes this distinction is without importance, as both are equally good.
BOLETUS EDULIS, Bulliard.
Plate III. Figs. 1 and 2.
Section Cortinaria, Fries.
"Atto sovra ognun altro fungo al commercio, forma da questo lato,
per non pochi paesi della Lombardia, una delle principali risorsi della
povera gentc."—Vitt.
The ancient Komans were well acquainted with this truly


DESCRIPTION OP SPECIES.
91
delicious fungus, and in general appear to have done it jus-
tice; the strings of dried Suillus, which his countrymen, on
the testimony of Pliny, were in the habit of fetching from
Bithynia, were in all likelihood the same as those similarly-
prepared strings of the modern Porcino which are sold du-
ring the winter in every market-place throughout Italy*
Vittadini mentions a curious fact respecting them, viz. that
though they are composed of many different Boletuses, no
mischief was ever known to originate from their indiscrimi-
nate and very extensive consumption; whence he concludes
that all the species of this genus are innocuous, or, at least,
that drying and cooking will extract any deleterious principles
which they may have originally contained;—an inference, he
thinks, supported by the daily use among the peasantry of
certain districts of the B. luridus, which of all bad Boletuses
commonly passes for the worst, and by his having experi-
mented with it in large doses upon animals, who did not suffer
in consequence. I have eaten in England a small quantity
both of B. Grevillei and of B. granulatus, which have much
of the flavour of the B. edulis; of the B. subtomentosus (though,
on the authority of Trattinick, it is eaten in Germany) I have
no personal experience, nor do I recommend to the amateur
any species beyond the two universally eaten and approved of
on the Continent, viz.:—B. edulis and B. scaber.
B. edulis.—Bot. Char. Pileus from six to seven inches
across, pulvinate, smooth, with a thick margin, varying in
colour from light brown or bronze, to bay, dark brown, or
* 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. Ccesareus. It would seem however
from this epigram, that the Suillus was not in Martial's time, what it now un-
questionably is, a favourite with the rich.


92
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
black, or a mixture of all these colours. The epidermis firmly
adherent to the flesh, that firm, and except the part in imme-
diate contact with the skin, which has a slight brown tint,
white; the under surface of the cap nearly flat, often pre-
senting a circular pit or depression round the stalk; tubes at
first white, then yellow, lastly of an olive or yellow-green tint,
in the earlier stage of development (their free extremities then
lie against the side of the stalk) closed; afterwards, as the cap
expands, stopped up with a waxy-looking material of a dirty
pearl colour. Stem varying much in shape at different periods
of the growth of the Boletus, always thick and solid; at first
white, but soon changing to fawn colour, beautifully meshed
or mapped (especially on its upper portion) with reticulations
characteristic of this species. As the period for casting its
seed advances, the inferior surface of the cap swells out, the
waxy matter is absorbed, the tubes present deep and rounded
orifices to the eye, and presently emit an abundant seminal
dust, of an ochraceous green hue (sometimes difficult to collect,
from the quantity of moisture exhaled with it), after which
both cap and stalk become flaccid, the tubes turn to a dirty
green, and the whole fungus falls rapidly into a state of
decomposition. The favourite sites for this Boletus are woods,
especially those of piues, oaks, and chestnuts; it abounds in
autumn, but occurs in spring and occasionally in summer.
There is one variety, the pinicola, whose name gives its where-
abouts, which differs from the foregoing, in having a moist,
somewhat sticky cap, a watery flesh changing near the tubes
to a light yellow-green when bruised; the reticulations are
ill-marked in this species.
The Boletus edulis cannot be mistaken for any other Boletus
because it alone presents all the following characters united,
viz. a cap of which the surface is smooth; tubes the colour


94
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
tepid water, thickening with toasted bread, till the whole be of
the consistence of a puree, then rub through a sieve, throw in
some stewed Boletuses, boil together, and serve with the usual
condiments.
AGARICUS CAMPESTRIS.
Section Pratella. Subdivision Psaliota, Fries.
Agaricus campestkis, Linn.
"Oil croit ce champignon, delice des festins,
Que l'art fait chaque jour nattre dans nos jardins."—Castel.
There is scarcely any one in England who does not feel
himself competent to decide on the genuineness of a mush-
room: its pink gills are carefully separated from those of a
kindred fungus Ag. Georgii, which are of a flesh-coloured grey,
and out of the pickings of ten thousand hands, a mistake is
of rare occurrence; and yet no fungus presents itself under
such a variety of forms, of such singular diversities of aspect!
the inference is plain; less discrimination than that employed
to distinguish this, would enable any who should take the
trouble, to recognize at a glance many of those esculent
species, which every spring and autumn fill our plantations
and pastures with plenteousness. Neither is this left to be a
mere matter of inference; it is corroborated in a singular man-
ner by what takes place at Rome; here, whilst many hundred
baskets of what we call toadstools are carried home for the
table, almost the only one condemned to be thrown into the
Tiber, by the inspector of the fungus market is our own
mushroom :* indeed, in such dread is this held in the Papal
* "II Sorvegliatore fa gettare ai venditori tutti i funghi fracidi e quelli che
crede nocivi, ed e aasolutamente proibita la vendita dei cosi detti prateroli
buoni o cattivi che sieno."—Sanguinetti (extract from an unpublished letter).


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
95
States, that no one knowingly would touch it. "It is reckoned
one of their fiercest imprecations," writes Professor Sangui-
netti, "amongst our lower orders, infamous for the horrible
nature of their oaths, to pray that any one may die of a
Pratiolo;" and although it has been some years registered
among the esculent funguses of Milan and Pavia (on the
authority of Vittadini), it has not yet found its way into those
markets. Besides the general botanical characters which
apply to all varieties of Ag. campestris, almost every writer
has felt the necessity of pointing out several peculiarities,
belonging to each. Common to all are a fleshy pileus, which
is sometimes smooth, sometimes scaly, in colour white, or of
different shades of tawny, fuliginous, or brown; gills free, at
first pallid, then flesh-coloured, then pink, next purple, at
length tawny-black; the stem white, full, firm, varying in
shape, furnished with a white persistent ring; the spores
brown-black, and a volva which is very fugacious.
Var. a. edulis.
This, which is our button mushroom, lies at first concealed
in the earth, at which period it presents the appearance of a
puff-ball; at a second stage of its growth, it exhibits a white,
smooth, and continuous epidermis; gills rounded off at their
posterior end; a large, somewhat funnel-shaped, double ring,
free, and somewhat moveable on the stem, which is short and
thick. This, according to Vittadini, is the most sapid variety
of any.
Var. b. pratensis.
This differs from the last in the duskier hue of its pileus,
which is moreover scaly, and has ragged margins; the gills
are ventricose; and the ring, which is subfugacious, is corti-
narious, i. e. of a cobweb texture, and reflexed; the stalk is


96
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
longer than in the last species, and tapers towards the base;
the colour of the flesh in this variety is vinous or even
sanguine.
Var. c. silvicola.
This differs from the two former in the following particu-
lars; the gills axe pallid, taper equally at both ends, and come
off at a considerable distance from the stalk, which is sur-
rounded above by a very delicate ring, and is bulbous at the
base, the bulb showing traces of the volva.*
Var. d. anceps.
Such uncultivated mushrooms as when eaten even in small
quantity, produce violent derangement of the stomach and
intestinal canal, belong to a variety which, since it grows under
hedges, is sometimes called "the hedge mushroom;" this,
to which, for distinction's sake, 1 have given the name of anceps,
is by no means of rare occurrence. In order to discriminate
it properly from the wholesome varieties, the first point to
notice is its extreme lightness as compared with its bulk, that
the gills are of a deeper and of a more lurid red than those of
var. edulis, and in age less purple; they are also less deliques-
cent. The flesh is more tough and not so juicy. The stem,
as in the var. silvicola, is curved and bulbous, but also fistu-
lose throughout. The ring complete, firm, broad, reflexed,
and persistent; the odour disagreeable, and the taste insipid.
The form of the pileus that of an obtuse cone in young speci-
mens; extremely flat in the middle state; and more or less
concave in age. It seldom grows solitary. The mushroom
* "This is that variety oiAg. cantpestris which has been so often confounded
with the Amanita verna, and with these the Ag. albus virosus; all these fun-
guses, besides presenting a strong similarity in appearance, are found in the
Bame locality, and at about the same time of year."—Vitt.


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
97
proper, like other funguses, should be eaten fresh; a few hours
making all the difference between its wholesomeness or un-
wholesomeness: nor need this surprise us when we consider how
many principles enter into its composition, how short is the
period of its existence, and how liable it must be to enter into
new combinations in consequence. Vauquelin found in its flesh
fat, adipocere, osmazome, an animal matter insoluble in alcohol,
sugar, fungine, and acetate of potash. What a medley ! and what
wonder, if the changes induced during decomposition should
cause the indigestions suffered by those who have eaten them
in this state! The mushroom, having the same proximate
principles as meat, requires, like meat, to be cooked before
these become changed. The Ag. campestris may be prepared
in a great variety of ways: they give a fine flavour to soups,
and greatly improve beef-tea;—where arrow-root and weak
broths are distasteful to the patient, the simple seasoning of a
little ketchup will frequently form an agreeable change. Some
roast them, basting with melted butter and white (French)
wine sauce.* In patties and vols-au-vent they are equally
excellent; in fricassees, as everybody knows, they are the
important element of the dish. Roques recommends in all
cases the removal of the gills before dressing, which though
it secures a more elegant-looking entremet, is only flattering
the eye at the expense of the palate.
Var. e. bovinus.
This variety differs from the Ag. Georgii and the type of
the species in size and other particulars. There are specimens
which measure fifteen inches across the pileus, with a stalk of
corresponding dimensions. The pileus is shaggy, like that of
* Ude complains that we have none of the light French wines for sauces ex-
cept champagne. Cider or perry will, however, be found good substitutes.
H


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
99
tity of garlic, finely chopped; toss up over a brisk fire with a
little butter; add some lemon-juice; give them a few turns;
then add salt, pepper, nutmeg, and a wine-glassful of the
richest brown gravy (Grande Espagnole); when the mush-
rooms are warmed through in this, add a couple of glasses of
Sauterne, simmer for ten minutes, and serve.
A homely mode of cooking Ag. campestris in Bucks, is to
cut up the buttons with pieces of bacon the size of dice, and
then to boil them in a dumpling.
Method of Cultivating.
The following method of cultivating mushrooms is given in
Paxton's ' Botanical Dictionary —
"Collect a sufficient quantity of fresh horse-droppings, as
free from straw as possible; lay it in an open shed in a heap
or ridge; here it will heat violently, and in consequence
should be now and then turned for sweetening; after this has
subsided to moderation, it will be in a fit state for forming
into a bed. In the process of making the bed, the dung
should be put on in small quantities and beat firmly and
equally together, until it is the required size; in this state let
it remain until the highest degree of heat to which it is ca-
pable of coming is ascertained, which may be readily done by
inserting a heat-stick, and pressing it with the hand; if not
found violent, the spawn may be broken up into pieces of two
or three inches square, and put into holes about three inches
in depth by six inches asunder, over its surface; after this,
throw a very small quantity of well-broken droppings over the
whole. In this state let it remain for two or three weeks,
when a loamy soil may be pJt on about an inch or an inch
and a half thick, and gently patted with the spade. If the
temperature of the house be kept about sixty or sixty-five
h 2


100
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
degrees, mushrooms may be expected in six weeks. It is not
well to water the beds much, particularly when bearing; it is
much better to throw a little water over the path and flues,
which will both improve the colour and the flavour of the
mushrooms, without being attended with those bad effects
frequently resulting from watering, viz. that of destroying
the young stock, and turning browner those already fit for
table."—Paxton's Bot. Diet.
With regard to the spawn, it may be collected as recom-
mended in the French work cited by M. Roques, and kept
in a dry place till wanted; or by digging about the roots of
growing mushrooms, and carrying away the earth which con-
tains it. The debris of a former mushroom-bed will always
furnish spawn for a new.
AGARICUS EXQUISITUS, nob.
Plate IV., Figs. 3, 4, and 5.
Section Psaliota, Fries. Subdivision Pratella, ibid.
AGABICUS Geobgii, Withering.
"L'Agarico esquisito e un fungo sano, oltremodo delicato e di
facilissima digestione."— Titt.
"Its flavour is far inferior to that of the common mushroom."—Berkeley.
This fungus, called also the Horse Mushroom, from the
enormous dimensions* to which it sometimes attains, is for
the most part shunned by the English epicure; it is also this
species from which many persons report themselves to have
* "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.


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
101
suffered indigestion attended with violent colicky pains, when
they have eaten it by mistake for the Ag. campestris. It is
sold, under the name of White Caps, for making ketchup; but,
notwithstanding its foreign name and reputation, most per-
sons will agree with Mr. Berkeley, in holding both its flesh
and its juices as greatly inferior to those of the Ag. campestris.
Our other name for it, that of St. George's Agaric, can have
no reference to the time of its appearance, as it is seldom met
with in England till after that saint's day; it has, moreover,
the same name in Hungary, where the inhabitants look upon
it as a special gift from Saint George.
Its botanical characters are the following:—
Pileus at first conico-campanulate, covered with floccose
shreds, which are very fugacious; when fully expanded, mi-
nutely squamulose, of a beautiful white, shining and smooth;
turning yellow when bruised, and sometimes exuding a yellow
juice (Sibthorpe). Gills numerous, broad, attenuated both
ways, but most so behind, free, of a pallid hue (grey flesh-
colour), during the growth of the fungus; later, clouded
brown-black; the imperfect gills obtuse behind. Stem long,
subcylindrical, slightly thickened at the base, white without,
stuffed within. Ring tumid and reflected over the stalk.
Flesh of both pileus and stalk compact, fibrous, and fragile.
Flavour and smell strong, and, according to Vittadini, agree-
able, but according to English perception generally the re-
verse. Persoon pronounces this fungus to be superior to the
common mushroom in smell, taste, and digestibility, on which
accounts, he says, it is generally preferred in Prance. It is
to be cooked in the same way as that, and, if eaten in mode-
ration, will seldom be found to incommode the stomach or
offend the palate.
Locality.—Pastures, amidst thickets, under trees, generally


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
103
'turns green, while that of the Ag. torminosus is white and un-
changeable.
Mr. Sowerby thus speaks in praise of this species:—" I
had one dressed; it was very luscious eating, full of rich
gravy, with a little of the flavour of mussels."
Sir James Smith, in his 'Tour,' says :—" The market of
Marseilles exhibited a prodigious quantity of Ag. deliciosus,
which really deserves its name, being the most delicious mush-
room known."
The Agaricus deliciosus may be served with a white sauce,
or fried; but the best way to cook them, after duly seasoning
with pepper and salt, and putting a piece of butter upon each,
is to bake (in a closely-covered pie-dish) for about three-
quarters of an hour.
BOLETUS SCABER, Fries.
Plate VI. Figs. 1, 2.
"Fungo innocente e che non pud cagionare alcun danno, uon molto
ricercato a motivo, senza dubbio, del cambiamento di colore in cui va
BOggetto la sua carne allorche viene rotta o compressa."— Vitt.
Bot. Char. This fungus presents itself under two distinct
forms; in the first, the B. aurantiacus of Bull., the pileus
(generally rather downy, but sometimes rough) is of a beau-
tiful deep orange hue; in the other it is cinereous.
In both cases its shape is that of a hemisphere of from three
to seven inches across, the surface of which becomes viscid
when moist, and is minutely downy. In the first variety,
the stem is rough with black, in the second with orange
scales.


104
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
Half a foot is its average height; it is attenuated upwards.
While young, it is very thick in proportion to the pileus, and
exhibits frequently the traces of a floccose veil. The flesh is
thick and flabby, of a dingy white, not greatly changeable in
young specimens, but deepening in colour when old, and ac-
quiring a vinous tint ;* the tubes are of a dirty white, those
that surround the stem being shorter than the rest.
The odour of this fungus is slight; the taste subacid; the
seminal dust copious, and tawny-ferruginous. It may be
cooked like the B. edulis, and has an agreeable flavour; but
being more viscid in substance, it requires when stewed to be
thinned with water; when dried, it loses all odour, and is then
insipid and unfit for food.
BOLETUS LURIDUS.
Plate VI. Figs. 3, 4, and 5.
Nothing can be more accurate than Mr. Berkeley's descrip-
tion of this species, which I therefore subjoin:—" Woods.
Summer and autumn. Common. Pileus two to six inches
broad, convex, expanded, minutely tomentose, olive, brick-
red, pinkish, cream-coloured, or ferruginous-brown. Flesh
more or less yellow, changing to blue.f Tubes free, yellow
* "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."
—rut.
t 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.


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
105
or greenish; their orifices of a beautiful red or bright orange,
quite simple, round. Spores olivaceous-ochre. Stem very
variable in length, bulbous, tomentose, sometimes quite smooth,
red with ferruginous or the brightest yellow shades, solid,
generally more or less marked or reticulated with crimson-
red, very deleterious " (? *).
AGARICUS PERSONATUS.
Plate I. Fig. 2.
Subgenus Tricholoma, Fries.
Blewitts.
I never met with this fungus in Italy; it has not been de-
scribed by Vittadini, nor, that I am aware of, by any Italian
mycologist; neither is it mentioned by Cordier or Roques, in
their treatises on the esculent funguses of France. Extremely
common in England, this species has already found its way to
Covent Garden, where, according to Sowerby, it is sold under
the name of " Blewitts."f The favourite haunt of the Blewitt
is amidst grass, where it grows in clusters, or in large rings,
seldom appearing before October.
The botanical characters, as given by Mr. Berkeley, are as
follows :—" Pileus from two to six inches broad, fleshy, firm;
pale bistre or purple-lilac, occasionally violet; convex, obtuse,
very smooth, and shining, as if oiled, but not viscid; margin
involute, pulverulento-tomentose. Gills rounded; free, nar-
row in front, paler than the pileus, sometimes violet, turning
* This requires further corroboration.
t Sc. "Blue Hats"(?), as Ag. Georgii is called "White Caps," and Ag.
Oreades "Scotch Bonnets."


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
107
days' exposure to the air is generally sufficient to effect this),
the Ag. oreades may be kept for years without losing any of
its aroma or goodness, which on the contrary become im-
proved by the process, so as, in fact, to impart more flavour
to the dish than would have been imparted by the fresh
fungus; though it is not to be denied that the flesh then be-
comes corjaceous and less easy of digestion.* From the sad
accidents occasioned by persons mistaking other small and
poisonous Agarics growing in the neighbourhood of the
Champignon for the Champignon itself, this species is fre-
quently looked upon with suspicion, and not often eaten in
England. The Agaric the least unlike and most commonly
found growing in company with the Ag. oreades, is the Ag.
semilobatus, which is nearly allied to, if it be not the same as
the Ag. virosus of Sowerby. But as I have also heard of a
gentleman who intending to gather Champignons, and taking
home some Ag. dryophilus by mistake, was rendered very ill
by his repast, to prevent the recurrence of such mistakes for
the future, I here add the botanical characters, marking what
is peculiar to each in italics. Ag. dryophilus is represented in
PI. VII. fig. 5.
AG. DRYOPHILUS.
Solitary or tufted. Pileus from one to two inches broad, whitish, pinkish,
yellowish, or yellow-brown, flat, sometimes depressed, fleshy, thin, fragile, when
moist easily injured, of a tougher substance when dry. Gills soft, tender, nu-
merous, white, or pale yellow straw-colour. Stem ahining, hollow, of the same
colour as the pileus, but towards the apex generally darker and of a redder
tinge.
* This mushroom, famous for the flavour it imparts to rich soups and gravies,
is also used in the French "a la mode " beef shops in London, with the view of
heightening the flavour of that dish. As the aroma is dissipated by over-
cooking, 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.


108 ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
AG. OEEADES.
In dense rings, or gregarious. Pileus smooth, fleshy, convex, subumbonate,
generally more or less compressed, or sinuate; tough, coriaceous, elastic, wrin-
kled, when water-soaked brown, buff or cream-colour when dry; the umbo
often remaining red-brown, as if scorched. Gills distant, ventricose, of the same
tint as the pileus or paler.. Stem equal, solid, twisted, very tough and fibrous,
pure, silky, white; base downy, somewhat rooting and attached to the roots of
grass.*
AG. SEMIGLOBATUS.
Pileus hemispherical, viscid when moist, shining and smooth as if varnished,
obtuse, fleshy. Gills very broad, perfectly horizontal to the stem, broadly ad-
nata, with a little tooth, minutely serrated, mottled with purple-brown sporules.
Stalk very viscid, shining when dry with a closely-matted silkiness, fistulose,
sometimes bulbous with a hollow bulb; ring generally complete, reflexed, often
dusted with the dark-coloured spores.
AGARICUS NEBULARIS.
Plate IV. Fig. 2.
Subgenus Clitocybe. Section Dasyphylli, Fries.
Ao. pileolarius, Bulliard.
"II est tres-agreable au gout."—Bulliard.
The following description was made from some among the
more characteristic specimens of a large supply which I
gathered this autumn (1847) near Hayes, from a spot where
they are in the habit of re-appearing regularly in October.
Pileus from two and a half to five inches across; at first
depresso-convex; when expanded nearly flat or broadly sub-
umbonate, never depressed, margin at first involute and prui-
nose; occasionally somewhat waved and lobed, but generally
* 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 neighbour-
hood is the first to scorch up and wither.


110
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
CANTHARELLUS CIBARIUS.
Plate VIII. Fig. 1.
Tribe Mesopus. Subdivision Agaricini, Fries.
"Sunt qui hune perniciosum scripsere. Verum etiam latranti sto-
macho eum oomedi; atque ex eo pulmenta parantur, quae si aridis
mortuorum oribus admoveantur peream ni revivisoerent!"—Batt.
"Jure inter sapidissimos fungoa numeratur."—Fries.
No fungus is more popular than the above, though the
merits—nay, the very existence —of such a fungus at home is
confined to the Freemasons, who keep the secret! Having
collected a quantity at Tunbridge Wells, this summer, and
given them to the cook at the Calverley Hotel to dress, I
learnt from the waiter that they were not novelties to him;
that, in fact, he had been in the habit of dressing them for
years, on state occasions, at the Freemasons' Tavern. They
were generally fetched, so he said, from the neighbourhood of
Chelmsford, and were always well paid for. Of the Cantha-
rellus, this summer (1847), the supplies were immense! the
moss under the beech-trees in Buckhurst Park in particu-
lar, was so lavish of them, that a hamper might soon have
been filled, had there been hands to gather them. On re-
visiting the same park about five weeks later, they were still
continuing to come up, but in less abundance.
The botanical characters of the Cantharellus are as follow:—
When young, its stalk is tough, white, and solid; but as it
grows this becomes hollow and presently changes to yellow;
tapering below, it is effused into the substance of the pileus,
which is of the same colour with it. The pileus is lobed, and
irregular in shape, its margin at first deeply involute, after-
wards when expanded, wavy. The veins or plaits are thick,
subdistant, much sinuated, running some way down the stalk.


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
Ill
The flesh is white, fibrous, dense, "having the odour of apri-
cots" (Purton), or of "plums" (Vitt.). The colour yellow,
that of the yolk of eggs, is deeper on the under surface; when
raw it has the pungent taste of pepper; the spores which are
elliptic, are of a pallid ochre colour (Vitt.) .* The Chantarelle
grows sometimes sporadically, sometimes in circles or segments
of a circle, and may be found from June to October. At first
it assumes the shape of a minute cone; next, in consequence
of the rolling in of the margin, the pileus is almost spherical,
but as this unfolds, it becomes hemispherical, then flat, at
length irregular and depressed.
"This fungus," observes Vittadini, "being rather dry and
tough by nature, requires a considerable quantity of fluid
sauce to cook it properly." The common people in Italy dry
or pickle, or keep it in oil for winter use. Perhaps the best
ways of dressing the Cantharellus are to stew or mince it
by itself, or to combine it with meat or with other funguses.
It requires to be gently stewed and a long time to make
it tender; but by soaking it in milk the night before, less
cooking will be requisite.
The Canth. cibarius is very abundant about Rome, where' it
fetches, not being in great esteem, from twopence to two-
pence halfpenny a pound.
AGARICUS ATRAMENTARIUS, Bull.
Plate IX. Figs. 1 and 2.
Subgenus Coprinus, Fries.
Bot. Char. Pileus fleshy, campanulate, margin uneven,
* I have, however, found them white.


112
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
colour greyish, then light brown, slightly hairy, often corru-
gated, sometimes scaly in the centre. Gills numerous, deep,
with clear veins, light brown, black in age, the edges grey or
white, free, obtuse behind. Stem about four inches high,
swollen at the base, piped, juicy, fibrous, marked with bands.
This is a common fungus in gardens, waste corners of
fields, and lanes, and occasionally growing on stumps of trees
in such situations: it is gregarious and caespitose, and occurs
both in spring and autumn. Young specimens afford a fine
ketchup.
AGARICUS COMATUS.
Plate VII. Figs. 1, 2, and 3.
Subgenus Coprinus, Fries.
"A fungus in great request about Via Reggio and Lucca."—Puccinelli.
Bot. Char. Pileus cylindrical, breaking up into long scales,
campanulate, epidermis thin, flesh thick in the centre, very
thin and stringy at the margins. Gills numerous, quite free,
leaving a space round the top of the stem. Stem from four
to five inches high, rather bulbous at the base, stuffed with
fibres, brittle, ring moveable.
This fungus may be found from early spring till late in the
autumu, in meadows and waste places.
When used for making ketchup or for the table, only young
specimens should be selected.


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES. 113
AGARICUS HETEROPHYLLUS, Fries.
Plate III. Figs. 3 and 4.
Subgenus Russula, Scopoli.
MILD RUSSULE. RUSSULE MITES, auct.
"Non meno sicuro e gustoso del Cesareo e del Porcino."—Vitt.
It is of the utmost importance that those who gather fun-
guses for the table, should be accurately acquainted with the
different species composing this genus; its members are so
abundantly distributed; some of them form so excellent and
delicate a food, whilst others produce such deleterious effects
on the economy, that they are well entitled to a diligent and
careful attention. The limits of this work will not permit an
accurate discrimination of all the species, which would require
a long monograph to themselves; but I have endeavoured
to point out amidst those of most frequent occurrence, the
three which may be selected with profit for the table, and
some others which are nearly allied, from which we must be
careful to separate them.
The three mild-flavoured Russult e are the Ag. Jieterophyllus,
Ag. ruber, and Ag. virescens; the botanical characters of the
first are as follows:—
Ag. heterophyllus.
Pileus subirregular, from three and a half to four and a half
inches across, at first convex, then more or less excavated
towards the centre; for the most part smooth, the epidermis
covering it, more or less moist, never scored or fissured, but
exhibiting a continuous surface, marked by very small raised
lines, radiating as from the centre, and frequently crossing so
as to present a very minute finely reticulated meshwork, some-
i


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
115
Agaricus ruber, Schoeffer. Ag. griseus, PersooD.
"L'Agarico Rosso h udo dei funghi piu. delicati e gustosi che si
conoscono."— Vitt.
Bot. Char. Pileus rather fleshy, at first hemispherical, then
obtusely convex, and, when fully expanded, more or less exca-
vated towards the centre. The margins at first even, at length
tuberculo-sulcate, that is, marked with lines similar to those
left on the skin after cupping. The epidermis dry in dry
weather, but very sticky in moist, of various hues, tawny-
purple, olive-green, ochraceous-yellow, or several of these
united, and generally darkest at the centre; peeling off readily
without laceration of the flesh. The flesh white, when cut
slightly rufescent, when dry cream-coloured. The gills fragile,
cream-coloured, connected below by transverse plaits or veins,
thick and broad, but tapering away towards the stalk, really
simple, though a few imperfect gills interposed between the
entire ones, and attaching themselves to their sides give these
sometimes the appearance of being forked; the stalk equal,
white, or blotched here and there with purple stains, stuffed,
brittle, and Vittadini adds, "long," which is not my experi-
ence of it; when young it is so short as to be entirely hid by
the globose head of the unexpanded pileus. The flesh incon-
siderable but compact; sporules pale-buff.
The Ag. ruber, the Colombo rossa of the Tuscans, and Rolher
Taubling of Schoeffer, is a complete wood-pigeon in its haunts;
it grows very abundantly, may be gathered from July to a
very late period in the autumn, and is as delicate and light of
digestion as the Russula last described. It may be readily
distinguished from Ag. alutaceus by the different colour of its
gills and spores, which in that species are buff, but in the Ag.
ruber cream-coloured: moreover the greater thickness of the
i 2


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
117
Tt is an exceedingly delicate fungus, but not very common
in England. The best way of cooking it, according to Vitta-
dini, is on the gridiron; the peasants about Milan are in the
habit of putting it over wood embers to toast, eating it after-
wards with a little salt, in which way it has a savoury smell,
and a taste like that of the Cancer astacus; when fresh it is
without odour, but acquires a very strong one while drying,
which he compares to that of salt meat. Mr. Berkeley quotes
Roques' authority as to its being eaten in France; Vittadini,
without giving any authority, states that it is eaten in England.
It loses but little of its volume in drying.
ACRID RUSSULE. RUSSULE ACRES, auct.
Agaricus alutaceus, Persoon.
Three acrid Russulce remain to be described, Ag. alutaceus,
Ag. emeticus, Ag. sanguineus; all three common, though not
perhaps so common as the mild ones, and all to be avoided.
The first, A. alutaceus, Fries, is ranked by Vittadini among
the safe kinds, he even affixes a misplaced note of admiration
after his epithet "esculentus!" and describes it even when
raw as "a dainty food, possessed of a most agreeable flavour."
Mr. Berkeley, who reports it esculent when young, remarks
that individual specimens occur, which prove almost as acrid
as the Ag. emeticus itself; my own experience of it in England
is, that whether young or old, it is always acrid when raw.*
I have never tried it dressed, which might possibly extract
* 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. alu-
taceus acris.


118
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
its noxious qualities, as Vittadini reports to have been the
case with a caustic variety which he subjected to this test;
but since even then, on his own showing, it proved indiges-
tible, I would advise no one to try this species, especially
when there are so many others, the good qualities of which are
known.
It is easy to distinguish A. alutaceus from any of the fore-
going-species; to- do this it is only necessary to look at the
gills, which, in place of being, as in these, white, watery white,
or cream-coloured, are of a rich buff; pileus about three inches
broad, pink or livid olive, smooth on the surface, and viscid in
wet weather; the margin at first even, but in age striate; the
gills broad, equal, slightly forked, ventricose, free, connected
by veins; the sporules rich buff; the stem one and a half inches
long, blunt, surface longitudinally wrinkled or grooved, solid
without, spongy within, varying from white to buff.
Agaricus emeticus, Schoeffer.
Reports concerning the qualities of this fungus differ widely,
some asserting it to be a most deleterious species, of which
the mischief was not to be removed by cooking, whilst others,
on the authority of dogs whom they persuaded to eat some,
pronounced it innoxious. In this state of uncertainty Vitta-
dini, for the sake of science, and peradventure of adventure
also, determined to test its effects upon himself; he had pre-
viously given at different times large doses, of from six to
twelve ounces, to dogs, both in the crude state and also
cooked; but without result. "Still," says he,* "thinking that
though dogs might eat Ag. emeticus with impunity, it might yet
* "Sospettando ragionevolmente dietro le esperienze del Krapf e del Eoques
che questo fungo potesse esaer nocivo all' uomo e non agli animali, ho voluto
anch' io sperimentarlo su di me stesso."—Vitt.


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
119
prove injurious to man, I took five specimens of fair dimen-
sions, and having fried, I ate them with the usual condiments;
but though pains were taken to have them delicately prepared
(ottimamente cucinati), they still retained their acrid bitter
taste, and were most distasteful to the palate." The reader
will be glad to learn, that the only inconvenience suffered by
this bold self-experimentalist was a slight sense of prsecordial
uneasiness accompanied with flatulence,—effects attributable
entirely, as he believed, to the rich mode in which his dish
was prepared: though, more timid apparently for others'
safety than his own, he particularly adds, "though I have
clearly established to my own satisfaction, the complete inno-
cuousness of the A. emeticus ; still, as there are, or are said to
be, other Russulte of highly deleterious properties and closely
allied, the mistaking which for it might be paid for by the
loss of life, the safer rule is to abstain from all such as have
acrid juices."
The botanical characters of Ag. emeticus are as follow:—
Pileus more or less rosy, flesh compact, margin striate, epi-
dermis adherent; gills very brittle, arched in front, attenuated
towards the stalk, connected below by transverse plaits, gene-
rally simple, a few forked, the imperfect gills rounded off be-
hind; the stalk, which is compact, of equal dimensions, and
white, is generally more or less stained with red spots of the
same hue as the pileus; in the growing fungus, where the
epidermis has been removed and the flesh eaten by insects,
this soon acquires a tint as lively as that of the skin itself;
generally I have remarked that the erosions of insects and •
slugs do not produce any change of colour, even in the spe-
cies notorious under other circumstances for manifesting such
a change; thus the flesh of the Ag. rubescens, which turns
red when it is divided, may be frequently seen half eaten


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
121
AGARICUS OSTKEATUS, Jacq.
Plate X.
Subgenus Pleuropus, Persoon. Subdivision Concharia,
Fries.
"L'Ag. ostreato viene giustamente per la sua bonta ed innocenza
amesso tra i funghi commestibili, de' quali e pure permessa la vendita
sulle pubbliche piazze."— Vitt.
Bot. Char. Caespitose.* Pileus fleshy, smooth, blackish,
then cinereous, at length paler; epidermis strongly adherent,
flesh fibrous, moderately firm; gills anastomosing behind, not
glandular, white; stem sublateral or wanting. On dead trees.f
Season, spring and autumn.
As there are some singular differences presented by this
fungus in regard to development, odour, taste, and the colour
of the spores, which seem almost sufficient to entitle it to be
divided into two distinct species, I shall first describe the more
ordinary form, as given by Mr. Berkeley, and then mention
the variations from it.
"Imbricated, large; pileus subdimidiate, very thick and
fleshy; flesh white, dusky towards the surface; one inch _
deep, the border at first fibrillose; margin involute, as the
pileus expands the white fibrillae vanish, and the colour
changes to bistre; margin paler and rimulose, the whole sur-
face shining and satiny when dry, soft and clammy when moist;
gills broad, here and there forked,":]: standing out sharp and
erect like the fine flutings of a column, winding down the
stalk to different lengths, and those that reach the bottom
forming there a beautiful raised meshwork highly characteris-
* I lately found a single specimen of it, which Vittadini says is rare,
t On the Poplar and Willow, according to Vittadini; Apple and Laburnum,
on the authority of Berkeley; Elm and Ash, on my own.
X In some specimens the gills are all solitary.


122
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OP ENGLAND.
tic of this species, "dirty (pure ?) white, the edge serrated,
umber; taste and smell like that of Ag. personatus, which it
resembles somewhat in colour "spores white like those of
the Polyporus suaveolens."* The points of difference in those
which departed from the ordinary type were as follows :f—first,
in specimens growing close together and all equally exposed
to the light, the colour of all at the same period of growth
was not the same, being a delicate waxy-white in some of the
specimens, in others, a light-brown. Secondly, whereas this
fungus is generally "invested during infancy with a white
lanugo or down"% I observed the young Agarics, which pre-
sented themselves at first as small semitransparent eminences
rising irregularly from a common stalk, and not unlike in ap-
pearance the blisters on a chalcedony, to be thickly coated
with a light-blue varnish in place of it; the dry debris of
which varnish continued to adhere to the surface of the pileus
for some time afterwards. Thirdly, the complexion of the
spores, commonly described as white, was in these specimens
pale-rose. Fourthly, they exhaled the strong and peculiar
odour of Tarragon; and, finally, in place of being the delicate
fungus at table which in July I had always found it, these
specimens afforded a distasteful food. The Ag. ostreatus re-
sists cold in a remarkable manner; the circumstance of its
being found in winter has procured for it the trivial name of
Gelon. Ag. ostreatus is found on the barks of many sorts of
trees, and wherever it has once been it is apt to recur fre-
quently afterwards. It may be dressed in any of the more
usual ways ; but as the flesh is rather over-solid and tenacious,
it is all the better for being cooked leisurely over a slow fire.
* Vitt.
t It is probable that the varieties here referred to belonged to Ag. euos-
tnus, B. Care must be taken to distinguish between the two, as Ag. euosmus is
an unsafe species.—Ed. J Vitt.


124 ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
generally known that this fungus, though by no means so
common with us as some others, (a circumstance partly at-
tributable to the prevailing ignorance as to when and where
to look for it, or even of its being indigenous to England,*)
occurs not unfrequently in our orchards and woods, towards
the beginning of summer. Roques reports favourably of some
specimens sent to him by the Duke of Athol; and others,
from different parts of the country, occasionally find their
way into Covent Garden market. The genus Morchella com-
prises very few species, and they are all good to eat. Persoon
remarks, that though the Morell rarely appears in a sandy
soil, preferring a calcareous or argillaceous ground, it fre-
quently springs up on sites where charcoal has been burnt or
where cinders have been thrown.
Morchella esculenta.
Bot. Char. Pileus very various in shape and hue, the sur-
face broken up into little sinuses or cells, made by folds or
plaits of the hymenium, which are more or less salient, and
constitute the so-called ribs. These ribs are very irregular,
and anastomose with each other throughout; the pileus hol-
low, opening into the irregular hollow stem. Spores pale-
yellow.
Morchella semilibera.
Bot. Char. This may be known from the M. esculenta by
being, as its name imports, half free, i. e. having the pileus
for half its length detached from the stalk. Spores are pale-
* 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 recog-
nizing the plant, suffered the whole to perish! He has since been made aware
of liia mistake.


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES. 125
yellow. Odour, at first feeble, becomes stronger in drying.
Occurring less frequently than the last, and much less sapid.
Neither of these funguses should be gathered after rain, as
they are then insipid and soon spoil.*
M. Koques says the Morell may be dressed in a variety of
ways, both fresh and dry, with butter or in oil, au gras or a
la creme. The following receipts for cooking them are from
Per soon.
1st. Having washed and cleansed them from the earth
which is apt to collect between the plaits, dry thoroughly in a
napkin, and put them into a saucepan with pepper, salt, and
parsley, adding or not a piece of ham; stew for an hour, pour-
ing in occasionally a little broth to prevent burning; when
sufficiently done, bind with the yolks of two or three eggs,
and serve on buttered toast.
2nd. Morelles a VItalienne.— Having washed and dried,
divide them across, put them on the fire with some parsley,
scallion, chervil, burnet, tarragon, chives, a little salt, and
two spoonfuls of fine oil. Stew till the juice runs out; then
thicken with a little flour; serve with bread-crumbs and a
squeeze of lemon.
3rd. Stuffed Morells.—Choose the freshest and whitest
Morells, open the stalk at the bottom; wash and wipe them
well, fill with veal stuffing, anchovy, or any rich farce you
please, securing the ends, and dressing between thin slices of
bacon. Serve with a sauce like the last.f
* 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.
t In the Roman market the Morell is held in little esteem, and sells for
id. or hd. 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.


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
127
pandum should be cooked for a long time, and with plenty of
sauce, otherwise, being deficient in moisture, it is apt to be-
come rather tough; when well stewed it is an excellent dish,
with a slight flavour of oysters; it makes also a very good
puree. Vittadini places it among the most delicate of the
funguses of Italy.
FISTULINA HEPATICA, Fries.
Plate XII. Figs. 1 and 2.
"Fungus pauperibus esculentus."—Schceff.
This fungus, which, in the earlier stages of its development,
frequently resembles very closely a tongue in shape, structure,
and general appearance, presents later a dark, amorphous,
grumous-looking mass, bearing a still more striking likeness
to liver. Thus, seen while young, and just beginning to bud
out from the oak,* its papillated surface, regular shape, and
clear fibrous flesh make it an object of interest to many who,
introduced to it at an advanced period of growth, can hardly
be brought to believe that the blackened misshapen mass, that
looks like liver, and that deeply stains the fingers with an un-
sightly red fluid, can indeed be the same plant. It has, from
the earliest-recorded accounts, been designated by names
pointing to these resemblances: Cesalpinus calls it Linguae;
Wallemb, Buglossus quercinus; the vulgar name in Italy is
"Lingua quercina," or "Lingua di castagna." It constitutes
a genus by itself.
* Though the F. hepatica grows both upon oak and chestnut trees, this dif-
ference in its origin never perceptibly affects the plant, which is equally good,
whether it be gathered from one or from the other.


128
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
Bot. Char. Pileus confluent with the stalk: at first studded
on the upper side with minute papillse (the rudiments of tubes),
which afterwards disappear; flesh succulent, fibrous, like beet-
root in appearance, with a vinous smell and a slight acid
taste; tubes continuous with the fibres of the receptacle, un-
equal, very short, small, cylindrical, ochraceous-rufescent; at
first with closed pores, but as they elongate they become
patent; colour at first a dry dusky white, afterwards a
yellowish-red; the whole surface more or less sticky, with a
gelatinous secretion exuding from it; sporidia ochraceous-
green, and matured at different times from the unequal length
of the tubes. This fungus varies in size from that of a small
kidney to an irregular mass of many pounds' weight, and of
several feet in circumference. I recently picked a specimen
which measured nearly five feet round, and weighed upwards of
eight pounds; but this is nothing to one found by Mr. Graves,
which, on the authority of Mr. Berkeley, weighed nearly
thirty pounds.
The Fistulina hepatir.a, which Schoeffer calls the Poor Man's
fungus, "fungus pauperibus esculentus," deserves indeed the
epithet if we look to its abundance, which makes it an acqui-
sition to the labouring class wherever it is known; but that it
is in any other sense fitted for the poor, or to be eaten by
those only who can purchase no other food, is what I cannot
subscribe to. No fungus yields a richer gravy, and though
rather tough, when grilled it is scarcely to be distinguished
from broiled meat. The best way to dress it if old, is to stew
it down for stock, and reject the flesh, but if young, it may
be eaten in substance, plain, or with minced meat; in all
cases its succulency is such that it furnishes its own sauce,
which a friend of ours, well versed in the science of the table,
declares each time he eats it to be " undeniably good."


132
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
stem; stem white or dusky. In plantations of fir and chestnut
adjoining Wey bridge Heath, in Surrey. It has not yet been
found elsewhere in Britain.
VERPA DIGITALIFORMIS, Persoon.
PEZIZA ACETABULUM, Linn.
Tribe Cupulati.
These funguses are very similar in their properties to the
Helvellce; that is, are not to be despised when one cannot get
better, nor to be eaten when one can. "The Verpa," says
Vittadini, "though sold in the market, is only to be recom-
mended when no other esculent fungus offers, which is some-
times the case in spring." The Peziza acetabulum is utterly
insipid, and depends entirely for flavour upon the sauce in
which it is served. As they are rare in England, I shall
merely give the botanical character of each.
Verpa digitaliformis, Persoon.
Pileus campanulate, three-quarters of an inch high, more or
less closely pressed to the stem, but always free, wrinkled, but
not reticulated, under side slightly pubescent, sporidia yellow-
ish, elliptic, stem three inches high, half an inch thick, equal
or slightly attenuated downwards, loosely stuffed, by no means
hollow, transversely squamulose.* Season, spring.
* Another species of Peziza, the P. cochleata, grew very abundantly last
spring in Holwood Park, Keston. This species is quite insipid, and some-
what leathery, but Mr. Berkeley has seen it offered for sale under the name of
Morel].


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
133
Peziza acetabulum, Linn. Series Aleuria, Section Helvella,
Fries.
Bot. Char. Deeply cup-shaped, two inches broad, one and
a half deep, externally floccose, light-umber, darker within,
mouth puckered, tough; stem half to one inch high, smooth,
deeply but irregularly costato-lacunose, ribs solid "branching
at the top and forming reticulations on the outside of the cup,
so as to present the appearance of a cluster of pillars supporting
a font or roof, with fret-work between them" (Berkeley).
Season, spring.
POLYPORUS FRONDOSUS, Schrank.
Plate IV. Fig. 1.
There are many species of Polyporus eaten on the Conti-
nent; among the more common kinds to be mentioned are
P. frondosus and P. tuberaster, Persoon, P. corylinus, Mauri,
P.subsquamosus, Pers., P.giganteus, ibid., P. fomentarius, ibid.,
which last is the Amadou, or German tinder fungus. Two
of these are local; the P. tuberaster, which occurs principally
in the kingdom of Naples, and the P. corylinus or that of the
cob-nut tree, which (though it might perhaps be cultivated
elsewhere) is at present restricted to Rome; both these are
excellent for food.
As to the Polyporus squamosus, which is as common in
England as abroad, in substance it cannot be masticated, and"
its expressed juice is exceedingly disagreeable; I should not
think the P. fomentarius, to judge from its texture, promised
much better; nor P. giganteus, of which the flesh is some-
times so tough as to creak under the knife.


134
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
The true P. frondosus is probably rare in England, that
which I have met with and have had cooked, without being
able to say much in its favour, is the P. intybaceus of Fries,
which Mr. Berkeley says is distinguished from the other by
having larger pores. Vittadini has not included it among the
esculent funguses in his work; Persoon does not recommend
it for weak stomachs on account of its toughness.* Paulet,
indeed, is of a different opinion, telling us that in place of its
being heavy for the stomach, he will feel all the lighter who
sups upon it. The people in the Vosges seem to have an equal
affection for it with this writer, giving it the somewhat whim-
sical, though really most graphic sobriquets of the Hen-of-the-
Woods and the Breeding Hen (Mougeot). Professor San-
guinetti informs me that it sells for six or seven baiocchi in
the Roman market, the finer specimens being sent as surprise
presents, "per meraviglia," from poor tenants to hard land-
lords.
Bot. Char. "Pilei very numerous, dimidiate, condensed
into a convex tuft from half a foot to a foot broad, imbricated,
variously confluent, irregular, at first downy, dusky, then
smooth, livid grey; disk depressed, dilated above, from half
to one inch broad, convex, the base confluent with the com-
pound stem" (Fries).
* The toughness is owing to its being stewed too quickly; when properly
sweated with butter, as recommended for C. coralloides, it is quite tender.


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
139
but when perfectly fresh and properly prepared, it yields to
no other in digestibility. It may be dressed in many ways,
but the best method is to cut it into slices and fry these in
egg and bread-crumbs; so prepared, it has the flavour of a
rich, light omelette.*
AGARICUS MELLEUS.
Plate IX. Fig. 3.
Subgenus 3. Amillaria.
This is a nauseous, disagreeable fungus, however cooked,
and merely finds mention here, as its omission in a work on
the esculent funguses of England might seem strange to
those unacquainted with is demerits; it is really extraordi-
nary how some Continental writers, speaking from their own
experience, should ever have recommended it for the table.
Pliny's general apage against all funguses really finds an ap-
plication to this, which is so repugnant to our notions of the
savoury, that few would make a second attempt, or get dan-
gerously far in a first dish. Not to be poisonous is its only
recommendation; for as to the inviting epithet melleus, or
honeyed, by which it is designated, this alludes only to the
colour, and by no means to the taste, which is both harsh
and styptic.
Bot. Char. In tufts, near or upon stumps of trees, or posts.
Pileus dirty-yellow, more or less hairy; stem fibrous, varying
greatly in length, from one inch to nine or ten; enlarged
above and below, thinner in the middle; ring thick, spread-
* I have been informed that this Puff-ball is sometimes served on state
occasions at the Freemasons' Tavern.


140
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
ing, rough or leathery; gills somewhat decurrent, deeper
than the pileus; spores white, appearing like fine dust on
the gills.
AGARICUS ULMARIUS, Bull.
Subgenus Pleuropus. Subdivision .ZEgeritaria.
"Fungo mangiativo sommamente rioercato e di ottima quality,."— Vitt.
Bot. Char. Solitary or connected to others by a common
root; the pileus presenting a dirty-white surface, turning
afterwards to a pale rust-colour, and sometimes tessellated;
varying like all parasitical funguses in shape, but generally
more or less orbicular; flesh continuous with the stalk, white,
compact; stalk very thick, solid, elastic, smooth towards the
summit, tomentose at the base; gills of a yellowish tint,
broad, thick, ventricose, emarginate, i. e. terminating upon
the surface of the stem in a receding angle; the imperfect
gills few; taste and smell agreeable; spores white.
This Agaric which takes its name from the tree where it is
most commonly found, grows also, though less frequently, on
the Poplar and Beech. Mr. Berkeley reports it rare; perhaps,
however, as it is eminently local, it may here, as in Italy, be
common in some places though of unfrequent general occur-
rence. No country being so rich in Elm-trees as our own, we
should probably find A. ulmarius more often if the height at
which it grows among the branches did not frequently screen
it from observation.* Though registered in the Flora of
Tunbridge Wells, I have not met with a single specimen of it
this autumn.
* "Oe Champignon croit au milieu et vers le sommet de l'arbre, de sorte qu'il
n'est pas facile a voir ou a, recolter."—Persoon.


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
141
This Agaric dries well and may be kept (not, however, with-
out losing some of its aroma) for a long time without spoiling;
the gills, after a time, assume the same hue as the pileus.
AGAEICUS FUSIPES, Bull.
Subgenus Ci.ytocybe. Subdivision CHONDROPonES.
"H a le meme gout que le Champignon de Couche, quoique un peu
plus prononce."—Persoon.
Bot. Char. Gregarious; pileus fleshy, loose, of a uniform
brown colour, sometimes marked with dark blotches, as if
burnt; gills nearly free, serrated, at first dirty-white, after-
wards a clear bistre; easily separable from the stalk; stalk
hollow, veutricose, sulcate, rooting, spindle-shaped, slightly
grooved, tapering at the base, sometimes cracked transversely,
varying singularly both in length and breadth.
This excellent fungus is very abundant throughout summer
and autumn, coming up in tufts at the roots of old Oak-trees
after rain. It may be easily recognized by its peculiar spindle-
shaped stalk.
Vittadini does not mention it, nor does its name occur in
the list of esculent funguses in the Diz. di Med. Class.;
notwithstanding which the young plants make an excellent
pickle; while the full-grown ones may be stewed or dressed
in any of the usual modes adopted for the common mush-
room.


142
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
AGARICUS VAGINATUS, Bull.
Series 1. Leucosporus. Subgenus 1. Amanita.
"La Coucoumele grise (Ag. vag.) est une des especes les plus deli-
cates et les plus sures a manger."—De Candolle.
Bot. Char. "Margin of the pileus sulcate, gills white,
stuffed with cottony pith, fistulose, attenuated upwards, almost
smooth; volva like a sheath. Woods and pastures, August
and October; not uncommon. Pileus four inches or more
broad, plane, slightly depressed in the centre, scarcely umbo-
nate, fleshy, but not at the extreme margin, which is elegantly
grooved in consequence, viscid when moist, beautifully glossy
when dry; epidermis easily detached, more or less studded
with brown scales, the remnants of the volva, not persistent;
gills free, ventricose, broadest in front, often imbricated,
white; sporules white, round; stem six inches or more high,
from half to an inch thick, attenuated upwards, obtuse at the
base, furnished with a volva, this adnate below to the extent
of an inch, with the base of the stem, closely surrounding it
above as in a sheath, but with the margin sometimes expanded;
within and at the base marked with the groovings of the pileus,
brittle, sericeo-squamulose, scarcely fibrillose, but splitting with
ease longitudinally, hollow, or rather stuffed with fine cottony
fibres; the very base solid, not acrid, insipid. Smell scarcely
any. It occurs of various colours, the more general one is a
mouse-grey " {Berkeley).
The perfect accuracy of the above description will strike
every one familiar with this species. Vittadini speaks of it as
a solitary fungus, but I have found it on more than one occa-
sion in rings. Its flesh, being very delicate and tender, must
not be over-dressed. When properly fried in butter or oil,


DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES.
145
AGARICUS VIRGINEUS, Wullf.
Subgenus 8. Clitocybe. Subdivision Camarophylli.
White Field-Agaric.
Bot. Char. Pileus from one to two inches broad, margin
involute when young, then expanded, depressed in the centre.
Gills deep, connected with veins, sometimes forked, broadly
adnate, but breaking away from the stem as the pileus becomes
depressed. Stem six lines broad at the top, tapering down-
wards, not more than two at the base; at first stuffed with
fibres, then hollow, excentric; the whole plant white, with
occasionally a tinge of pink. Taste pleasant, odour disagree-
able.
These graceful little Agarics grow in pastures, and are ex-
tremely common in the autumn. They are so small that it
requires a great many of them to make a dish, but as they
occur frequently in the same fields with puff-balls, and may be
dressed in the same manner, it is not unusual when the supply
is scarce to serve them together, with the same sauce. The
flavour of Ag. virgineus is not unlike that of Ag. oreades.
TUBER .ESTIVUM, Vitt.
Plate VIII. Fig. 2.
Peridium warty, of a blackish-brown colour, the warts
polygonal and striate, flesh traversed by numerous veins; asci
4-6-spored; spores elliptical, reticulated.
This plant, the common truffle of our markets, is abundant
in Wiltshire and some other parts of England, and probably
occurs in many places where it escapes observation, from its
subterranean habit.
L


146
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, hut
for music. In few northern regions is Flora worse off
lor 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, Cycla-
mens, 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, musk* 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 culti-
vated ones; a coup de soleil or a fever is easily procured by
imprudent exposure before sunset, while the interval between
* In 1843, the friends of a patient, for whom I had occasion to prescribe
some musk, had recourso 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.


148
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OP ENGLAND.
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 scanti-
ness 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 pre-
vious 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 ac-
quaintance 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 sea-
son), but also because in that most beautiful of months, whe-
ther 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


CONCLUSION.
149
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 twi-
light, it was pleasant to pass the little opening coffee-house
with its two or three candidates for early breakfast, and cross-
ing 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 Rome-
ward, pausiug 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 pale," 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 Caesar's decease, in the very neighbour-
hood 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.


150
ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.
But not only in Italy, in our own country also, the Collec-
tor 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 poach-
ing, 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 Fislulina
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-kid-
heys ; 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,


CONCLUSION'.
151
which tastes like the craw-fish when grilled; the Ag. ruber
and Ag. virescens, to cook in anjr way, and equally good in
all;—these were among the most conspicuous of the trou-
vailles. But that the reader may know all he is likely to find
in one single autumn, let him glance at the catalogue below.*
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 con-
juror or something worse, in giving directions to stew toad-
stools. 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 con-
vert into money, or consume at their own tables, when pro-
perly prepared, throughout the winter.
* 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, hetero-
phyllus, virescens, deliciosus, nebularis, personatus, virgineus, fusipes, oreades,
osireatus, Orcella, campestris (and its Tarieties edulis and pratensis), exquisitus,
comatus, and ulmarius; Cantharellus cibarius; Polyporus frondosus; Boletus
edulis and scaber; Fistulina hepatica; Sydnum repandum; Helvelia lacu-
nosa; Peziza acetabulum and Bovista plumbea; Lycoperdon gemmaium and
Clavaria strigosa.
UNIV. ©F (VMCHIOAN,




















p] 111.











PLY

V FltA,del etlith Viricent brooks. Imp.








PL VI.

WFitch.cleletHth.
Vincent Brool(s,Imr














I











Pl.X





P1.III.

SEP 17 1912





CONTENTS.
PAGE
NEW SERIES OF NATURAL HISTORY ... ... ... 3
BOTANY ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 5
FERNS ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 10
MOSSES AND LICHENS 11
SEAWEEDS ... ... ... ... 12
FUNGI 13
SHELLS AND MOLI.USKS 14
INSECTS 16
ANTIQUARIAN 18
MISCELLANEOUS ... ... ... ... ... 21
RECENTLY PUBLISHED ... ... ... 24
FORTHCOMING WORKS 24


6
L. REEVE AND CO.'s PUBLICATIONS.
BRITISH GRASSES; an Introduction to the Study of the
GraminesB of Great Britain and Ireland. By M. Plubs. Crown 8vo, 100
Wood-Engravings, 6*.; with 16 Coloured Plates by W. Fitch, 10*. 6<2.
One of the 'New Series of Natural History,' accurately describing all the
Grasses found in the British Isles, with introductory chapters on the Structure,
Cultivation, Uses, etc. A Wood-Engraving, including dissections, illustrates
each Species; the Plates contain Coloured figures of 43 Species.
CURTIS'S BOTANICAL MAGAZINE, comprising New and
Rare Plants from the Royal Gardens of Kew, and other Botanical Establish-
ments. By Dr. J. D. Hooker, F.R.S., Director of the Royal Gardeus.
Royal 8vo. Published Monthly, with 6 Plates, 3*. 6rf. coloured. Vol. XXV.
of the Third Series (being Vol. XCV. of the entire work) now ready, 42*.
Descriptions and Drawings, beautifully coloured by hand, of newly-discovered
plants suitable for cultivation in the Garden, Hothouse, or Conservatory.
THE FLORAL MAGAZINE, containing Figures and De-
scriptions of New Popular Garden Flowers. By the Rev. H. Honywood
Dombrain, A.B. Imperial 8vo. Published Monthly, with 4 Plates, 2*. 6rf.
coloured. Vols. I. to V., each, with 64 coloured plates, £2. 2*. Vols. VI.
to VIII., 48 coloured plates, 31*. 6d. each.
Descriptions and Drawings, beautifully coloured by hand, of new varieties of
Flowers raised by the nurserymen for cultivation in the Garden, Hothouse, or
Conservatory.
THE TOURIST'S FLORA; a Descriptive Catalogue of the
Flowering Plants and Ferns of the British Islands, France, Germany,
Switzerland, Italy, and the Italian Islands. By Joseph Woods, F.L.S.
Demy 8vo, 504 pp., 18i.
Designed to enable the lover of botany to determine the names of any wild
plants he may meet with while journeying in our own country and the couutries
of the Continent most frequented by tourists. The author's aim has been to
make the descriptions clear and distinct, and to comprise them within a volume
of not inconvenient bulk.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE GENUS CAREX. By
Francis Boott, M.D. Part IV. Folio, 189 Plates, £10.
JOURNAL OF BOTANY AND KEW MISCELLANY.
Original Papers by eminent Botanists, Letters from Botanical Travellers,
etc. Edited by Sir W. J. Hooker, F.R.S. Vols. IV. to IX., Demy 8vo.
12 Plates, each £1. 4*.
ICONES PLANTARUM. Figures, with brief Descriptive
Characters and Remarks, of New and Rare Plants, selected from the
Author's Herbarium. By Sir W. J. Hooker, F.R.S. New Scries, VoL V.
Royal 8vo, 100 plates, 31*. 6d.


8
L. KEEVE AND CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.
FLORA VITIENSIS; a Description of the Plants of the
Viti or Fiji Islands, with an Account of iheir History, Uses, and Pro-
perties. By Dr. Bekthold Seemann, F.L.S. Royal 4to, Parts I. to IX.
each, 10 Coloured Plates, 15. To be completed in 10 Parts.
This work owes its origin to the Government Mission to Viti, to which the
author was attached as naturalist. In addition to the specimens collected, the
author has investigated all the Polynesian collections of Plants brought to this
country by various botanical explorers since the voyage of Captain Cook.
FLORA OF THE ANTARCTIC ISLANDS. By Dr.
J. D. Hooker, F.R.S. Royal 4to, 2 vols., 574 pp., 200 Plates, £10.15*.
coloured. Published under the authority of the Lords Commissioners of
the Admiralty.
The * Flora Antarctica' illustrates the Botany of the southern districts of South
America and the various Antarctic Islands, as the Falklands, Kerguelen's Land,
Lord Auckland and Campbell's Island, and 1370 species are enumerated and
described. The plates, which are executed by Mr. Fitch, and beautifully coloured,
illustrate 370 species, including a vast number of exquisite forms of Mosses and
Seaweeds.
FLORA OF TASMANIA. By Dr. J. D. Hookee, F.R.S.
Royal 4to, 2 vols., 972 pp., 200 Plates, £17. 10*., coloured. Published
under the authority of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty.
The 'Flora of Tasmania' describes all the Plants, flowering and flowerless, of
that Island, consisting of 2203 Species, collected by the Author and others.
The Plates, of which there are 200, illustrate 412 Species.
ON THE FLORA OF AUSTRALIA, its Origin, Affini-
ties, and Distribution; being an Introductory Essay to the 'Flora of Tas-
mania.' By Dr. J. D. Hooker, F.R.S. 128 pp., quarto, 10*.
FLORA HONGKONGENSIS; a Description of the Flow-
ering Plants and Ferns of the Island of Hongkong. By George Ben-
tham, P.L.S. With a Map of the Island. Demy 8vo, 550 pp., 16*.
Published under the authority of Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the
Colonies.
The Island of Hongkong, though occupying an area of scarcely thirty square
miles, is characterized by an extraordinarily varied Flora, partaking, however, of
that of South Continental China, of which comparatively little is known. The
number of Species enumerated in the present volume is 1056, derived chiefly
from materials collected by Mr. Hinds, Col. Champion, Dr. Hauce, Dr. Harland,
Mr. Wright, and Mr. Wilford.


10
L. BEEVB AND CO.'s PUBLICATIONS.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE FLORA OF MENTONE,
AND TO A WINTER FLORA OF THE RIVIERA, INCLUDING
THE COAST FROM MARSEILLES TO GENOA. By J. Traherne
Moggridge. Royal 8vo. Parts I., II., and III., each, with 25 Coloured
Plates, 15*.
In this work a full page is devoted to the illustration of each Species, the
drawings being made by the author from specimens collected by him on the spot,
and they exhibit in vivid colours the beautiful aspect which many of our wild
Mowers assume south of the Alps.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE NUEVA QUINOLOGIA
OF PAVON, with Observations on the Barks described. By J. E. Howard,
F.L.S. With 27 Coloured Plates by W. Fitch. Imperial folio, half-
morocco, gilt edges, £6. 6t.
A superbly-coloured volume, illustrative of the most recent researches of Pavon
and his associates among the Cinchona Barks of Peru.
THE QUINOLOGY OF THE EAST INDIAN PLANTA-
TIONS. By J. E. Howard, F.L.S. Folio, 3 Coloured Plates, 21*.
REVISION OF THE NATURAL ORDER HEDERA-
CEjE, being a reprint, with numerous additions and corrections, of a series
of papers published in the 'Journal of Botany, British aud Foreign.' By
Berthold Seemann, Ph.D., F.L.S. 8vo, 7 Plates. 10». 6d.
FERNS.
THE BRITISH FERNS; or, Coloured Figures and De-
scriptions, with the needful Analyses of the Fructification and Venation, of
the Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland, systematically arranged. By Sir
W. J. Hooker, F.R.S. Royal 8vo, 66 Plates, £2. 2*.
V The British Ferns and their allies are illustrated in this work, from the
pencil of Mr. Fitch. Each Species has a Plate to itself, so that there is ample
room for the details, on a magnified scale, of Fructification and Venation. The
whole are delicately coloured by hand. In the letterpress an interesting account
is given with each species of its geographical distribution in other countries.
GARDEN FERNS; or, Coloured Figures and Descriptions,
with the needful Analyses of the Fructification and Venation, of a Selection
of Exotic Ferns, adapted for Cultivation in the Garden, Hothouse, and Con-
servatory. By Sir W. J. Hooker, F.R.S. Royal 8vo, 64 Plates, £2. 2t.
A companion volume to the preceding, for the use of those who take an in-
terest in the cultivation of some of the more beautiful and remarkable varieties
of Exotic Ferns. Here also each Species has a Plate to itself, and the details of
Fructification and Venation are given on a magnified scale, the Drawings being
from the pencil of Mr. Fitch.


16
L. REEVE AND CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.
CONCHOLOGIA INDICA; being Illustrations of the
Land and Freshwater Shells of British India. Edited by Sylvanus
Hanlet, F.L.S., and William Theobald, of the Geological Survey of
India. 4to, Part I., with 20 Coloured Plates, 20*.
For want of a comprehensive book of reference, the land and freshwater
shells of British India are less known in Europe and America than those of
countries less frequented by travellers. To meet this acknowledged want, this
first attempt at a special conchology of our Indian empire has been essayed.
The present work is designed to be strietly pictorial, the data for a full and cor-
rect knowledge of the conchology of British India being as yet inadequate. So
far as it is possible to calculate from comparing the amassed materials with care-
fully compiled lists of described species, about eighty quarto plates will be requi-
site; these are designed to appear in Parts consisting of ten or twenty Plates,
priced at one shilling per Plate. The first Part, now ready, illustrates sixteen
Species. The second Part of twenty Plates is nearly ready; the rest will follow
as quickly as circumstances permit.
THE EDIBLE MOLLUSKS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND
IRELAND, with the modes of cooking them. By M. S. Lovell. Crown
8vo, 5*.; with 12 Coloured Plates, 8*. 6d.
INSECTS.
CURTIS'S BRITISH ENTOMOLOGY. Illustrations and
Descriptions of the Genera of Insects found in Great Britain and Ireland,
containing Coloured Figures, from nature, of the most rare and beautiful
species, and, in many instances, upon the plants on'which they are found.
Royal 8vo, 8 vols., 770 Plates, coloured, £21.
Or in separate Monographs.
Orders.
Aphanipteea
coleopteea „
Deemapteea..
DlCTYOPTBEA
DlPTEBA
Hemipteea ..
homopteea ..
Plat.ee. £ a. d.
5 ... 0 5 0
256 ... 8 0 0
1 ... 0 1 0
1 ... 0 1 0
108 ... 8 9 0
85 ... 1 1 0
51 ... OHO
Orders.
Htmenopteea
Lepidopteea
Neueopteea ...
Omalopteea...
Oethopteba ...
Steep sipteea
Teichopteea
Plates.
£.
t.
d.
155 .
. 4
0
0
198 ..
, 8
0
0
18 .
. 0
9
0
6 ..
. 0
4
0
B ..
. 0
4
0
3 .
. 0
5
6
9 ..
. 0
6
6
'Curtis's Entomology,' which Cuvier pronounced to have "reached the ulti-
matum of perfection," is still the standard work on the Genera of British In-
sects. The Figures executed hy the author himself, with wonderful minuteness
and accuracy, have never been surpassed, even if equalled. The price at which
the work was originally published was £43. 16s.
INSECTA BRITANNICA; Vol. TIL, Diptera. By Fbancis
Walker, F.L.S. 8vo, with 10 Plates, 25*.


20
L. REEVE AND CO.'s PUBLICATIONS.
MAN'S AGE IN THE WORLD ACCORDING TO
HOLY SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE. By an Essex Rectoe. Demy
8vo, 264 pp., 8*. td.
The Author, recognizing the established facts and inevitable deductions of
Science, and believing all attempts to reconcile them with the commonly re-
ceived, but erroneous, literal interpretation of Scripture, not only futile, but detri-
mental to the cause of Truth, seeks an interpretation of the Sacred Writings on
general principles, consistent alike with their authenticity, when rightly under-
stood, and with the exigencies of Science. He treats in successive Chapters of
The Flint Weapons of the Drift,—The Creation,—The Paradisiacal State,—The
Genealogies,—The Deluge,—Babel and the Dispersion; and adds an Appendix
of valuable information from various sources.
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN; An Examination of Sir
Charles Lyell's recent Work. By S. R. Pattison, F.G.S. Second Edition.
8vo, Is.
WHITNEY'S "CHOICE OF EMBLEMES;" a Facsimile
Reprint by Photo-lithography. With an Introductory Dissertation, Essays
Literary and Bibliographical, and Explanatory Notes. By Henet Gbeen,
M.A. Post 4to, pp. Ixxxviii., 468. 72 Facsimile Plates, 42i.
A beautiful and interesting reproduction by Photo-lithography of one of the
best specimens of this curious class of literature of the sixteenth century. An
Introductory Dissertation of eighty-eight pages traces the history of Emblematic
Literature from the earliest times, and gives an Account of the Life and Writings
of Geoffrey Whitney, followed by an Index to the Mottoes, with Translations
and some Proverbial Expressions. The facsimile reproduction of the 'Emblems,'
with their quaint pictorial Illustrations, occupies 230 pages. Then follow
Essays on the Subjects and Sources of the Mottoes and Devices, on Obsolete
Words in Whitney, with parallels, chiefly from Chaucer, Spenser, and Shake-
speare; Biographical Notices of some other emblem-writers to whom Whitney
was indebted; Shakespeare's references to emblem-books, and to Whitney's em-
blems in particular; Literary and Biographical Notes explanatory of some of
Whitney's emblems, and of the persons to whom they are dedicated. Seventy-
two exceedingly curious plates, reproduced in facsimile, illustrate this portion of
the work, and a copious General Index soncludes the volume.






BOUND
SEP 17 1952