will have to traverse much beautiful and diversified scenery; amid
woods, greenswards, winding lanes, rich meadows, healthy commons, open
downs, the nodding hop-grove and the mountain sheep-path; and all shone
upon by an autumnal sunset,—as compared with Southern climes “obscurely
bright,” and unpreceded by that beautiful rosy tint which bathes the
whole landscape in Italy, but with a far finer background of clouds to
reflect its departed glories: and throughout all this range of scenery
he will never hunt in vain; indulgent gamekeepers, made aware of what
he is poaching, may warn him that he is not collecting mushrooms, but
will never warn him off from the best-kept preserves. In such rambles
he will see, what I have this autumn (1847) myself witnessed, whole
_hundredweights of rich wholesome diet rotting under the trees; woods
teeming with food and not one hand to gather it_; and this, perhaps,
in the midst of potato blight, poverty and all manner of privations,
and public prayers against imminent famine. I have indeed grieved,
when I reflected on the straitened condition of the lower orders this
year, to see pounds innumerable of extempore beef-steaks growing on our
oaks in the shape of _Fistulina hepatica_; _Ag. fusipes_ to pickle, in
clusters under them; Puff-balls, which some of our friends have not
inaptly compared to sweet-bread for the rich delicacy of their unassisted
flavour; _Hydna_ as good as oysters, which they somewhat resemble in
taste; _Agaricus deliciosus_, reminding us of tender lamb-kidneys; the
beautiful yellow Chantarelle, that _kalon kagathon_ of diet, growing
by the bushel, and no basket but our own to pick up a few specimens in
our way; the sweet nutty-flavoured _Boletus_, in vain calling himself
_edulis_ where there was none to believe him; the dainty _Orcella_; the
_Ag. heterophyllus_, which tastes like the craw-fish when grilled; the
_Ag. ruber_ and _Ag. virescens_, to cook in any way, and equally good
in all;—these were among the most conspicuous of the _trouvailles_. But
that the reader may know all he is likely to find in one single autumn,
let him glance at the catalogue below.[197] He may at first alarm his
friends’ cooks, but their fears will, I promise him, soon be appeased,
after one or two trials of this new class of viands, and he will not long
pass either for a conjuror or something worse, in giving directions to
stew _toadstools_. As soon as he is initiated in this class of dainties,
he will, I am persuaded, lose no time in making the discovery known
to the poor of the neighbourhood; while in so doing he will render an
important service to the country at large, by instructing the indigent
and ignorant in the choice of an ample, wholesome, and excellent article,
which they may convert into money, or consume at their own tables, when
properly prepared, throughout the winter.
NOTE ON THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE SPORES IN HYMENOMYCETOUS FUNGUSES.
On the authority of Link, Fries, Vittadini, and other Continental
mycologists, I have, in speaking of the spores of the genera _Agaricus_,
_Boletus_, _Cantharellus_, _Hydnum_, and _Clavaria_, represented them as
enclosed in cases (thecæ or sporanges). But from an interesting memoir,
published by Mr. Berkeley in the ‘Annals of Natural History,’ “On the
Fructification of the Pileate and Clavate tribes of Hymenomycetous
Fungi,” which I had not then perused, it would appear that this
arrangement only holds good with respect to _Pezizas_, _Helvellas_, and
_Morels_, and not with respect to the above-mentioned genera, the spores
of which are attached (generally in a quaternary and star form) to the
ends of tubes, to which Mr. Berkeley has given the name of _sporophores_;
a disposition which, as he observes, had been long ago pointed out by the
great Florentine mycologist, Micheli. M. Montagne, in his ‘Recherches
Anatomiques et Physiologiques sur l’Hymenium,’ while he confirms the fact
of a quaternary disposition of the spores in general, thinks that during
the _first_ stage of their development they are lodged _within_ the
sporiferous tubes, to the mouths of which they afterwards adhere by means
of short spiculæ or branchlets.
These, like all other questions connected with the minute reproductive
granules of funguses, require for their solution not only the most
dexterous manipulation and the aid of the finest modern microscopes, but
are likely even then to exercise the ingenuity of the curious.
FOOTNOTES
[1] The word _seed_ here, or wherever else introduced into the present
work, is to be understood in its popular acceptation; correctly speaking,
spores differ from seeds in the absence of an apparent embryo; but in
a more catholic sense spores are seeds, since both are germinating
granules, producing each after their kind.
[2] At from twenty to thirty baiocchi, _i. e._ at about 1 _s._ 3 _d._ a
pound.
[3] The population of Rome is only 154,000; that of Naples, 360,000; and
that of Venice, 180,000.
[4] The Chinese present a striking contrast with ourselves in the
care which they bestow on their esculent vegetation. “Some days
since, M. Stanislas Julien presented to the Academy of Sciences, at
Paris, a Chinese work, which merits a word or two of notice in the
present circumstances of agricultural Europe. It is a treatise, in six
volumes, with plates, entitled ‘The Anti-Famine Herbal;’ and contains
the descriptions and representations of four hundred and fourteen
different plants, whose leaves, rinds, stalks, or roots are fitted to
furnish food for the people, when drought, ravages of locusts, or the
overflow of the great rivers have occasioned a failure of rice and
grain. Of this book the Chinese Government annually prints thousands,
and distributes them gratuitously in those districts which are most
exposed to natural calamities. Such an instance of provident solicitude
on the part of the Chinese Government for the suffering classes may be
suggestive here at home. A more general knowledge of the properties and
capabilities of esculent plants would be an important branch of popular
education.”—_Athenæum_, Nov. 16, 1846.
[5] There are three kinds of esculent funguses in Italy to which the
epithet _albus_ might apply, viz. the _Amanita alba_, of Persoon,
the _Lycoperdon Bovista_, Linn. (or common puff-ball), and _Agaricus
campestris_, Linn. (our common mushroom). The first kind grows in woods,
and the second in dry uncultivated spots, whereas Ovid mentions these in
conjunction with the Mallow (_Malva_), which grows in moist meadow-land;
it is probable, therefore, that he here alludes to the _Pratajolo_, or
meadow mushroom, or to that variety of it called from its whiteness
“boule de neige.”
[6] Etymol. _ad locum_.
[7] Well-fed domestic pigs, on the authority of a friend, refuse it; but
possibly, in the absence of full supplies of corn, they might be less
dainty.
[8] Vittadini assures us that the “slips of dried boletus, sold on
strings, are as frequently from these kinds as from the _Boletus edulis_
itself; notwithstanding which, no accident was ever known to happen from
the indiscriminate use of either.”
[9] Dioscorides, who lived in the time of Nero, says that pigs dig up
“truffles” in spring. Matthiolus, in his commentaries, speaks of an
inferior, smooth-barked, red truffle known to the ancients, to which the
above remark of Dioscorides perhaps applies; certainly it does _not_
apply to the black truffle, which begins to come into the Roman market in
November, and is over long before the spring.
[10] The Thracians are said to have intended this same _misy_ under the
new epithet of κεραύνιον, as though it were produced by thunder, unless
indeed, as in Theoph. lib. i. cap. ix., we should read κρανίον, in which
case they meant the _Lycoperdon giganteum_, a fungus frequently as big
as, and in the form of, the human head: whence its name of _cranium_.
[11] Whoever has time to waste on the unprofitable speculations of the
ancients concerning the parentage of funguses, and would like so to waste
it, may consult Pliny, lib. xvi. cap. 8, lib. xxii. cap. 23; Hist. Nat.
Dioscorides, lib. iii. cap. 78; Athenæus, lib. ii. in the Deipnosophisti;
and after them Galen, Clusius, Portæ (Villæ, lib. x.), Imperato (Hist.
Nat.), etc. The first really philosophical treatise which ascribes their
origin, like that of other plants, to seeds, was published by Micheli, at
Florence, in 1720.
[12] Roques.
[13] Vittadini.
[14] ‘Trattati dei Funghi.’ Roma, 1804.
[15] Have not both the words _Tode_ and the stool called after him some
etymological, as they have undoubtedly a fanciful, connection with the
word _tod_, death?
[16] Juvenal.
[17] Few minute objects are more beautiful than certain of these
mucedinous _fungi fungorum_. A common one besets the back of some of
the _Russulæ_ in decay, spreading over it, especially if the weather be
moist, like thin flocks of light wool, presenting on the second day a
bluish tint on the surface. Under a powerful magnifier, myriads of little
glasslike stalks are brought into view, which bifurcate again and again,
each ultimate twig ending in a semilucent head, or button, at first blue,
and afterwards black; which, when it comes to burst, scatters the spores,
which are then (under the microscope) seen adhering to the sides of the
delicate filamentary stalks like so many minute limpets.
[18] _Vide_ the London Docks, _passim_; where he pays his unwelcome
visits, and is in even worse odour than the exciseman.
[19] “Sir Joseph Banks having a cask of wine, rather too sweet for
immediate use, he directed that it should be placed in a cellar, that the
saccharine it contained might be more decomposed by age; at the end of
three years he directed his butler to ascertain the state of the wine,
when, on attempting to open the cellar-door, he could not effect it, in
consequence of some powerful obstacle; the door was consequently cut
down, when the cellar was found to be completely filled with a fungous
production, so firm, that it was necessary to use an axe for its removal.
This appeared to have grown from, or to have been nourished by, the
decomposing particles of the wine, the cask being empty, and carried
up to the ceiling, where it was supported by the fungus.”—_Chambers’s
Journal._
[20] Withering found one of these plants on the top of St. Paul’s
Cathedral; the first he had seen!
[21] _Sporendonema Muscæ._
[22] “When healthy caterpillars are placed within reach of a silkworm
that has been destroyed by the Botrytis, they, too, contract the disease,
and at last perish.”—_Chambers’s Journal_, October, 1845.
[23] A species of _Polystrix_ is affected, whilst alive, with a parasitic
kind of fungus, called _Sphæria_, which grows out of it, and feeds upon
it.
[24] Several of the French surgeons have given recitals of cases where,
on removal of the bandages from sore surfaces, they have found a
collection of funguses growing upon them, generally about the size of the
finger (Lemery); one of them adds, that having reapplied the wrappings,
a second batch came out in the course of twenty-four hours, and this for
several days consecutively.
[25] For an accurate description of these funguses, the reader is
referred to the excellent work of Mr. Berkeley.
[26] These, beautiful, but fleeting as beauty’s blush, generally perish
within a few hours; but I have seen some which, after a potting of 2000
years, retained their original hues unblemished, for they had been potted
with the town of Pompeii, and are preserved with the other frescoes upon
its walls.
[27] The _Mitrati_ are not a very numerous class, of which the _Morel_
may be taken as the type.
[28] The _Cupulati_, so called in consequence.
[29] _A. piperatus._
[30] _A. procerus._
[31] _Agaricus comatus_, in allusion no doubt to which Plautus says of
the Lord Chancellor of his day, “Fungino genere est, capiti se totum
tegit,”—that his wig was so long as to hide his whole person.
[32] The _Nidularias_ do so.
[33] The surface is rough with elevated papillæ, the structure fibrous,
the flesh softly elastic, the colour bright red, looking like the tongue
in the worst forms of gastro-enterite, with which its cold clammy surface
when touched offers no correspondence.
[34] _A. micaceus._
[35] Thore.
[36] _Agaricus narcoticus_, Batsch, Fascic. vol. ii. pl. 81.
[37] _A. alliaceus._
[38] _A. cinnamomeus._
[39] Fries.
[40] Bolton.
[41] Persoon.
[42] Micheli.
[43] These last, placed in a wineglass, over a sheet of white paper,
frequently disperse the seminal dust over a ring of twice the natural
dimensions of the Agaric.
[44] “One dark night, about the beginning of December, while passing
along the streets of the Villa de Natividade, I observed some boys
amusing themselves with some luminous object, which I at first supposed
to be a kind of large fire-fly; but, on making inquiry, I found it to be
a beautiful phosphorescent fungus, belonging to the genus _Agaricus_, and
was told that it grew abundantly in the neighbourhood, on the decaying
leaves of a dwarf palm. Next day I obtained a great many specimens,
and found them to vary from one to two and a half inches across. The
whole plant gives out at night a bright phosphorescent light, of a pale
greenish hue, similar to that emitted by the larger fire-flies, or by
those curious, soft-bodied, marine animals, the _Pyrosomæ_; from this
circumstance, and from growing on a palm, it is called by the inhabitants
‘Flor do Coco;’ the light given out by a few of these fungi in a dark
room, was sufficient to read by. It proved to be quite a new species,
and, since my return from Brazil, has been described by the Rev. M. J.
Berkeley under the name of _Agaricus Gardneri_, from preserved specimens
which I brought home.”—_Travels in the Interior of Brazil_, 1846.
[45] Hence it was called κρανίον (_vide_ Theoph. Lib. vol. i. cap. 9)
by the ancients. Cesalpinus describes it under the name of _Peziza_,
and reports that it is common in the woods of Pisa, whence men gather
to eat them. We read also, in an ancient Italian writer (Cicinelli),
that the environs of Padua produce enormous puff-balls, of which one
(unless this author was given to _puffing_) measured not less than two
feet across, in one direction, being upwards of a foot and a half in its
least diameter. It was big enough, he says, to have written on its rind
the celebrated inscription attributed by Dion Cassius to the Dacians,
which they presented to the Emperor, “in quo scriptum erat Latinis
literis Burros sociosque omnes eum hortari ut domum reverteretur pacemque
coleret.” Other authors also (Alph. de Tuberibus,—not truffles, but
puff-balls,—cap. xvii.; Imperato, Hist. Nat. Hol. vol. xxvii. cap. 5)
speak of puff-balls of sixty and one hundred pounds weight.
[46] Hist. Plant. vol. ii. p. 275.
[47] Villæ, Lib. vol. x. cap. 80.
[48] By this word, however, the vulgar generally understood the
_Cantharellus cibarius_.
[49] This species, which is somewhat rare in England, occurred in
abundance this year (1847) in the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells. I
found four specimens of it on the oak-roots in the Grove, one of which
rose nearly a foot from the ground, measured considerably more than two
and a half feet across, and weighed from eighteen to twenty pounds; the
other specimens were of much smaller dimensions.
[50] Robert Scott, Act. Linn. Soc. vol. viii. p. 202.
[51] Dufresnoy.
[52] Roques.
[53] _Amadou_ is largely used in Italy, where it is called _esca_;
the Latins likewise knew it by this name, though their more common
appellation for it was _fomes_; the Byzantine Greeks hellenicized _esca_
into ὕσκα, which was their word for it; the ancient Greeks called it
ζώπυρον. Salmasius tells us how it used to be made in his time, which
indeed was the same as now: the fungus was first boiled, then beaten to
pieces in a mortar, next hammered out to deprive it of its woody fibres,
and lastly, being steeped in a strong solution of nitre, was left to dry
in the sun. It appears, on the testimony of the anonymous author of the
article “Fungo” in the ‘Dizionario Classico di Medicina,’ that it is also
eaten when young; but I cannot speak of it from personal experience:—“In
prima età mangiasi colto di fresco affettato e condito d’ogni modo;
specialmente nelle provincie di Belluno ed Udine, o salasi per la
quadragesima.”
[54] “Di questo fungo servavanosene i barbieri in cambio delle strugghie
dette più volgaremente _codette_, atte a far riprendere il perduto filo a
loro rasoi.”
[55] “This is the ‘Moucho more’ of the Russians, Kamtchadales, and
Koriaks, who use it for intoxication; they sometimes eat it dry, but more
commonly immersed in a liquor made from the _Epilobium_, and when they
drink this liquor, they are seized with convulsions in all their limbs,
followed with that kind of raving which accompanies a burning fever.
They personify this mushroom, and, if they are urged by its effects to
suicide, or any other dreadful crime, they pretend to obey its commands;
to fit themselves for premeditated assassination they recur to the use of
the Moucho more.”—_Rees’s Cyclopædia, art. “Agaric.”_
[56] In such cases the minute fungus is probably absorbed _in ovo_ and
disseminated with the sap through the plant; as this ascends from the
root, it remains undeveloped however till the corn is in ear, at which
time it finds in the nascent grain the necessary conditions for its own
development.
[57] The mischief thus produced by dry-rot may be arrested by steeping
the affected timber in a solution of corrosive sublimate, which, forming
a chemical union with the juices of the woody fibre, prevents their being
abstracted by the dry-rot, that would else have maintained itself and
spread at their expense.
[58] A reputation that revives may not be so good as one that survives,
but the very fact of such revival shows that the good opinion formerly
entertained was not altogether groundless.
[59] Enslin was in the habit of uniting this _Polyporus_ with Peruvian
Bark, and obtained from it the happiest results: “Omnium mihi arridet
connubium ejus cum cortice Peruviano”—to which “connubium,” no doubt,
some of its good effects are to be attributed.
[60] Haller relates, that the inhabitants of Piedmont are in the habit of
swallowing a small piece of this Agaric, when they have drunk with their
water some of those small leeches in which it abounds. Bomare mentions of
this same Agaric, that the inhabitants of Balcu use it in powder to heal
blains in their cattle.
[61] Hunter.
[62] It is the Frenchman’s _heart_! “J’ai mal au cœur” means, as every
one knows, in the French tongue, not ‘I am sick at heart,’ as it
professes to say, but ‘I am sick at stomach’!
[63] Walpole.
[64] The phrase “I like it, but it does not like me,” which one sometimes
hears at table, having a reference to some particular idiosyncrasy of the
party who makes the remark, does not invalidate the truth of this general
proposition.
[65] Pope. Mead, if anybody, ought to have been good authority on the
subject of this particular diet. He had written, _ex professo_, upon
poisons; and the Florentine mycologist Micheli had dedicated several
newly-discovered funguses to him. He was therefore both a Toxicologist
and a Mycologist.
[66]
“No thought too bold, no airy dream too light,
That will not prompt your Theorist to write;
No fact so stubborn, and no proof so strong,
Will e’er convince him he _could_ argue wrong.”—_Crabbe._
[67] Broussais divides inflammatory dyspepsia into _five_ parts or acts.
That Leach of leeches, whose word once passed for more than it was worth,
came at last to see himself and his _sangsues_ utterly abandoned, and
to have the mortification of lecturing in his old age to empty benches.
“Quantum mutatus ab illo” of less than twenty years before, and who had
been the cause of as much innocent bloodshedding as Napoleon himself, and
used to kill his patients that his leeches might be fed!
[68] “Fungus qualiscunque sit semper _malignus_.”—_Kirker, Lib. de Pest._
[69] “_Apage_ ergo perniciosa isthæc gulæ blandimenta.”
[70] “Quot colores tot dolores, quot species tot pernicies.”
[71] M. Roques gives at the end of his treatise on funguses a long list
of his mycophilous friends, including in the number many of the most
eminent _medical_ men of the French capital—if medical men are more
careful of what they eat than their neighbours, which, however, is
exceedingly doubtful.
[72] “To eat raw mushrooms” was a proverbial expression among the Greeks,
as is shown by the passage which Athenæus quotes out of a play of
Antiphanes, called the ‘Proverbs’:—Ἔγω γάρ ἂν τῶν ὑμετέρων φάγοιμί τι,
μύκητας ὠμοὺς αὔτικ’ ἂν φαγεῖν δοκάω.
[73] Those who themselves know better, smile to read such passages as the
following, which is to be found in old Gerard’s ‘Herbal’:—“Galen affirms
that they (_i. e._ funguses) are all very cold and moist, and therefore
do approach unto a venomous and mothering facultie, and engender a clammy
and pituitous nutriment; if eaten, therefore, I give my advice unto those
that love such strange and new-fangled meates, to beware of licking honey
among thorns, lest the sweetnesse of the one do not countervaille the
sharpnesse and pricking of the other.”
[74] A life of labour, no doubt, will make the sorriest fare sit more
lightly on the healthy stomach, than the most dainty viands which have
been received into an organ that is weakened and goaded by a life of
dissipation and excess; but this does not prove sorry fare to be more
wholesome than that of a richer kind. No! Dyspepsia is a disease of
the rich; not because they live upon the fat of the land, but plainly
because they indulge in too large a quantity at a meal. Let the peasant
and the lord change places for a week; place the healthy rustic at the
rich man’s table, and Dives again at the other board, what would be the
results to both? Would not the poor man, think you, find indigestion in
ragoût, fricassees, truffles, with light wine _ad libitum_ to drink with
them? and would not the rich man find that the fat pork and hard beer
were worse poison than any of the made-dishes, against which he has been
so lavish in his blame? In general, no doubt, to be “the happiest of
mortals—to digest well” (Voltaire), men should look more to the _quantum_
and less to the _quale_ of what they eat; but they should pay some
attention to this too.
[75] Ἢν δὲ πάντα ὅμοια ποιήσῃ οὐκ ἔχει τέρψιν. Π.Δ. Α. 10.
[76] That I did not always hold such an opinion as the above, to which I
have since given in my adhesion, the following ode to Eupepsia, written
in the days of theoretical inexperience, will sufficiently testify. I am
now convinced that Hippocrates was right!—
Happy the man whose prudent care
Plain boiled and roast discreetly bound;
Content to feed on homely fare,
On British ground!
Sound sleep renounces _sugared_ peas!—
No nightmares haunt the modest ration
Of tender steak, that yields with ease
To mastication!
From stews and steams that round them play,
How many a tempting dish would floor us,
Had nature made no toll to pay
At the pylorus!
He dines unscathed, who dines _alone_!
Or shuns abroad those _corner_ dishes;
No Roman garlics make him groan,
Nor matelotte fishes.
Then let not Vérey’s treacherous skill,
Nor Véfour’s, try thy peptic forces;
One comes to swallow many a pill
Where many a course is!
With _mushroomed_ dishes cease to strive;
Nor for that _truffled crime_ inquire,
Which nails the hapless goose alive,
At Strasburg’s fire.