2. The cause of violent digestive or other
functional disturbance, but not necessarily fatal.
3. The occasion of more or less serious physical
derangement through mere indigestibility.
4. Productive of similar disorders through the
employment of decayed or wormy specimens of perfectly
esculent species.
5. These same esculent species, even in their
fresh condition, may become highly noxious by contact
or confinement with specimens of the Amanita by
the absorption of its volatile poison, as further
described on p. 69.
[Sidenote: =Concerning idiosyncrasy=]
And lastly comes the question of idiosyncrasy, a consideration which
is of course not taken into account in our recommendation of certain
well-established food varieties.
[Sidenote: =Decaying mushrooms=]
[Sidenote: =Fresh specimens=]
"One man's food another man's poison." The scent of the rose is
sometimes a serious affliction, and even the delicious strawberry
has repeatedly proven a poison. Even the most wholesome mushroom
will occasionally require to be discriminated against, as certain
individuals find it necessary to exclude cabbage, milk, onions, and
other common food from their diet. When we reflect, moreover, that in
its essential chemical affinities the fungus simulates animal flesh,
and many of the larger and more solid varieties are similarly subject
to speedy decomposition, it is obviously important that _all fungi
procured for the table should be collected in their prime, and prepared
and served as quickly as possible_. More than one case of supposed
mushroom poisoning could be directly traced to carelessness in this
regard, when the species themselves, in their proper condition, had
been perfectly wholesome.
[Sidenote: =No general rule for identification=]
There can be no general rule laid down for the discrimination of _an
edible fungus_. Each must be _learned_ as a species, or at least
familiarized as a kind, even as we learn to recognize certain flowers,
trees, or birds.
Within a certain range this discrimination is practised by the merest
child. How are the robin, the chippy, and the swallow recognized, or
the red clover, and white clover, and yellow clover?
[Sidenote: =Simple botanical discrimination=]
Even in the instances of species which bear a very close outward
similarity, how simple, after all, does the distinction become. Here,
for instance, is the wild-lettuce, and its mimic, the _mulgedium_,
growing side by side--to ninety-nine out of a hundred observers
_absolutely alike_, and apparently the same species. But how readily
are they distinguished, I will not say by the botanist merely, but by
any one who will take the small pains of contrasting their specific
botanical characters--perfectly infallible, no matter how various the
masquerade of their foliage. The lettuce has yellow blossoms, and a
seed prolonged into a _long beak_, to whose tip the feathery pappus
is attached. The mulgedium has dull bluish flowers, and its pappus
is attached to the seed by a hardly perceptible elongation. As with
the birds and wild-flowers, so with the fungi: we must learn them as
species, even as we learn to distinguish the difference between the
trefoil of the clover and that of the wood-sorrel, or between the
innocuous wild-carrot and the poison-hemlock, the harmless stag-horn
sumach and its venomous congener, the _Rhus venenata_. There are
parallel outward resemblances between esculent and poisonous fungi,
but each possesses otherwise its own special features by which it may
be identified--variations of gills, pores, spores, taste, odor, color,
juice, consistency of pulp, method of decay, etc.
It must not be presumed that the list of edible species just cited
from the catalogue of Dr. Curtis includes all the esculents among the
fungi. Dr. Harkness has discovered and classified many others. Mr.
Palmer and Prof. Charles Peck are never at a loss for their "mess of
mushrooms" among their list of nearly a hundred species, while Mr.
Charles McIlvaine, whose name, so far as its practical authority is
concerned, should appear more prominently in my bibliographical list,
but who has not yet incorporated his many mycological essays in book
form, writes me that he has tested gastronomically a host of species,
and has found over _three hundred_ to be edible, or at least harmless.
It may be said that the probabilities would include a large majority of
the thousand species in the same category. But this is a matter which,
in the absence of absolute knowledge, is mere conjecture.
Of the forty-odd species which the writer enjoys with more or less
frequency at his table, he is satisfied that he can select at least
thirty which possess such distinct and strongly marked characters of
form, structure, and other special qualities as to enable them, by
the aid of careful portraiture and brief description, to be easily
recognized, even by a tyro.
As previously emphasized, the present work does not aim to be complete,
nor does it contemplate a practical utility beyond its specific
recommendations, nor will the author assume any responsibility for the
hazard which shall exceed its restricted list of species.
[Sidenote: =Humanity and forbidden fruit=]
On general principles, however, considering the proneness of humanity
towards the acquisition of forbidden fruit, and reasoning from my own
actual experience, and that of many others to whom this fascinating
hobby of epicurean fungology has become a growing passion, it may
almost be assumed that the fungus appetite with many of my readers will
increase by what it feeds on, and the sufficiency herewith offered will
scarcely suffice. Like Oliver Twist, they must needs have _more_. The
glory of a new acquisition to the fungus menu, and emulation of other
rival tyro mycophagists, will doubtless lead many enthusiasts to more
or less hazardous experiment among the legion of the unknown species.
This logical tendency, then, must be met ere my book can safely and
conscientiously be launched upon its career, to which purpose I would
append the following condensed