_October 1, 1894_ WASHINGTON, CONN.
[Illustration: The Deadly Amanita]
_The Deadly Amanita_
The frequency of this terrible foe in all our woods, and the
ever-recurring fatalities which are continually traced to its seductive
treachery (some twenty-five deaths having been recorded in the public
journals during the summer of 1893 alone), render it important that
its teeth should be drawn, and its portrait placarded and popularly
familiarized as an archenemy of mankind.
[Sidenote: =A whited sepulchre=]
As we have seen, from every superficial standpoint, this species is
self-commendatory. It is, without doubt, in comeliness, symmetry,
and structure, the ideal of all our mushrooms, as it is, indeed, the
botanical type of the tribe Agaricus, as well as its most notorious
genus. Since the time of that carousing young lunatic Nero, who,
doubtless, was wont to make merry with its "convenient poison," upon
one occasion, it is recorded by Pliny, to the presumably amusing
extinction of the entire guests of a banquet, together with the prefect
of the guard and a small host of tribunes and centurions, the Amanita
has claimed an army of victims.
[Sidenote: =Easily identified botanically=]
While giving no superficial token of its dangerous character to
the casual observer, the Amanita, as a genus and a species, is
nevertheless easily identified, if the mushroom collector will for the
moment consider it from the _botanical_ rather than the sensuous or
gustatorial standpoint.
The deadly Amanita need no longer impose upon the fastidious feaster in
the guise of the dainty "legume" of his menu, or as a contaminating,
fatal ingredient in the otherwise wholesome _ragoût_.
[Sidenote: =Amanita vernus=]
In Plate 3 I have presented the reprobate _Amanita vernus_ in its
protean progressive proportions from infancy to maturity. This is
especially desirable, in that the fungus is equally dangerous as an
infant, and also because the development of its growth specially
emphasizes _botanically_ the one important structural character by
which the species or genus may be easily distinguished. Let us, then,
consider the specimen as a type of the tribe Agaricus (gilled mushroom,
see p. 79), genus Amanita.
[Sidenote: =Vegetation of an Agaric=]
[Sidenote: =The danger signal=]
Year after year we are sure of finding this species, or others of
the genus, especially in the spring and summer, its favorite haunt
being the woods. Its spores, like other mushrooms, are shed upon the
ground from the white gills beneath, as described in our chapter on
"Spore-prints," or wafted to the ends of the earth on the breeze, and
eventually, upon having found a suitable habitat, vegetate in the form
of webby, white, mould-like growth--mycelium--which threads through
the dead leaves, the earth, or decaying wood. This running growth is
botanically considered as the _true_ fungus, the final mushroom being
the _fruit_, whose function is the dissemination of the spores. After
a rain, or when the conditions are otherwise suitable, a certain point
among this webby tangle beneath the ground becomes suddenly quickened
into astonishing cell-making energy, and a small rounded nodule begins
to form, which continues to develop with great rapidity (Plate 2). In
a few hours more it has pushed its head above ground, and now appears
like an egg, as at A, Plate 3. The successive stages in its development
are clearly indicated in the drawings. Each represents an interval of
an hour or two, or more, the most suggestive and important feature
being the _outer envelope_, or _volva_, which encloses the actual
mushroom--at first completely, then in a ruptured condition, until in
the mature growth the only vestige of it which appears above ground
are the few shreds generally, though not always, to be seen on the
top of the cap. The _most important_ character of this deadly Amanita
is, therefore, apparently with almost artful malice prepense, often
_concealed_ from our view in the mature specimen, the only remnant of
the original outer sack being the _cup_ or _socket_ about the base of
the stem, which is generally hidden under ground, and usually there
remains after we pluck the specimen.
[Illustration: PLATE II.--MYCELIUM, AND EARLY VEGETATION OF A
MUSHROOM]
[Sidenote: =The poison-cup=]
This "poison-cup" may be taken as the cautionary symbol of the genus
Amanita, common to all the species. _Any mushroom or toadstool,
therefore, whose stem is thus set in a socket, or which has any
suggestion of such a socket, should be labelled "poison"_; for, though
some of the species having this cup are edible, from the popular point
of view, it is wiser and certainly safer to condemn the entire group.
But the cup must be _sought_ for. We shall thus at least avoid the
possible danger of a fatal termination to our amateur experiments
in gustatory mycology; for, while various other mushrooms might,
and do, induce even serious illness through digestive disturbance,
and secondary, possibly fatal, complications, the Amanita group are
now conceded to be the only fungi which contain a positive, active
poisonous principle whose certain logical consequence is death.
[Sidenote: =The "veil" or shroud=]
Another structural feature of the Amanita is shown in the illustration,
but has been omitted from the above consideration to avoid confusion.
This is the "veil" which, in the young mushroom, originally connected
the edge of the cap, or pileus, with the stem, and whose gradual
rupture necessarily follows the expansion of the cap, until a mere
frill or ring is left about the stem at the original point of contact.
But this feature is a frequent character in many edible mushrooms,
as witness the several examples in the edible species of our plates,
and therefore of no dangerous significance _per se_, being merely a
membrane which protects the growing gills.
[Illustration: PLATE III.--DEVELOPMENT OF AMANITA VERNUS]
[Sidenote: =Scales and scurfy spots=]
Nor are the other features, the remnants of the volva on the summit
of the cap, to be considered of primary importance from the popular
point of view, for the reason--firstly, that these fragments, while
conspicuous and constant in _Amanita muscarius_ (Plate 4), are _not_
thus permanent in several other species of Amanitæ, notably the
white-satin-capped _Amanita vernus_, _Amanita phalloides_, and _Amanita
Cæsarea_, in which the fragments are deciduous; and, secondly, because
the same general effect of these warty scales is so clearly imitated in
other mushrooms which are distinctly edible, as in examples Plate 10
and Plate 16. It is to the _volva_ or _cup_, then, that we must devote
our special attention as the only safe and constant character. And this
leads me to the prominent and necessary consideration of another common
species of Amanita, mentioned above, in which even this cup is more or
less obscure.