Chapter II: Part 2

In the “sensual philosophy,” of the French school particularly, the stomach has received marked attention, ranking in that country as the most noble of the _viscera_.[62] Even in those republican times when no other rights were held sacred throughout France, the privileges of the stomach were respected; 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.”[63] 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.[64] In France, the dinner is the thought of the morning, and sometimes the business of the day, but in France everybody dines; in England, where the word ‘dinner’ never occurs till it is announced, 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 Continental neighbours; it is simply that they want skill in preparing 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.”[65]

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 _ostracized_ 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 médecin Tant Pis,” would frequently _proscribe_ the very things that his rival, “Le médecin Tant Mieux,” had just been recommending. When men 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 régime_, became only the more hypochondriacal for their pains.

None but a determined theorist[66] 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 enlightened, self-educated public, that can read Liebig and thoroughly appreciate its own case, hold out much encouragement 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’[67] has received its last plaudits; already has Crabbe’s _euthanasia_ to this class of authors attained its full accomplishment:—

“Ye 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,
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 fungus. What diatribes against it might be cited from the works of Athenæus, Dioscorides, Galen, Pliny, the Arabian physicians, and all their commentators! What terrible recitals, too, of poisoning from some few species have been industriously 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;”[68] thus too Allen and Batarra pen unsolicited _apages_,[69] 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;[70] 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 fuisse _fungum_ 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 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 service has been rendered to the public by Paulet, Persoon, Cordier, and Roques,[71] 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 Schwægrichen suffice, who tells us, that on seeing the peasants about Nuremberg eating _raw_ mushrooms,[72] 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 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.[73] 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.[74] “You must assist nature,” Hippocrates says, “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.[75] Cooks therefore make _mixed_ dishes, and he who should always make the same dish would deservedly pass for not being a cook at all.”[76] And though Sydenham, in apparent discordance with this, recommends _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.[77] Nine-tenths of 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 æquo 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 _à discrétion_. “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 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.”[78] 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?
Your 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 cure?—but one: _Refrain_!

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 βρῶμα θεῶν, they should meet with the fate of the Emperor Claudius, and prefer remaining _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. “Cœlum non animum mutat;” οὐ γὰρ τὸν τρόπον ἀλλὰ τὸν τόπον μόνον μετήλλαξα.[79] That the mushroom is not quite so wholesome when cultivated as it is in the meadow,[80] in a state of nature, cannot be doubted;[81] 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 and becomes poisonous like the toadstool.[82] It has been unwarily asserted, that because the people of the north are in the habit of employing in their kitchen the _Agaricus muscarius_, which is known to be poisonous in the south, this points to some remarkable difference in the plant depending on difference 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 recitals in various mycological works; and only not more frequently 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 mushroom (_Ag. campestris_) varies considerably both as to flavour and wholesomeness (circumstances attributable in part to the varieties of soil in which it flourishes[83]), 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 England as they are in France, Switzerland, or Italy. Thus the 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 particular 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 discriminate, 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 fungus which some of them assert to be esculent, some doubtful, and others altogether poisonous in its qualities. Such discrepancies, however, have already in many cases been satisfactorily adjusted, whilst a more minute attention and corresponding improvement in the pictorial representation of species is daily diminishing the errors of the older mycologists.

Admitting then, what there is no gainsaying, the existence of many dangerous individuals in this family,[84] ought we not, in a matter of such importance, rather to apply ourselves to the task of discriminating them accurately[85] than permit idle 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 OF 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 agreeableness 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;”[86] but though the strong peculiar smell exhaled by this and some other esculent funguses is anything but a perfume, as we apprehend the term, it is very different from that intolerable fœtor, that nauseous overwhelming odour given out by the _Phallus impudicus_, 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 negative 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 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. lactifluus aureus_), though in high request in their respective localities, and really delicate themselves, are akin to others whose milks, though they may have the colour of gold, have the qualities of gamboge.

“——Nescius auræ
Fallacis,
Qui nunc te fruitur credulus _aurea_!”

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 zoné;” 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.[87] 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.[88] The external colour furnishes no certain information—with the single exception of that of the gills in one or two Agarics—by which to know the good from the bad; thus, the “Boule de Neige” and the Vernal Amanite are both white; but the dress, in one case, is of innocence, in the other of mere hypocrisy; again, the green, which we are so cautioned to avoid in this class of plants as chlorotic and unhealthy, and which is of such bad augury in _Amanita viridis_, is quite the contrary in the _Verdette_ (_Ag. virescens_). So that to be led only by colour would certainly be to be misled—a mistake which, in the family of the _Russulæ_, might readily compromise life.

Some mycologists recommend, with certain exceptions, the avoidance of such Agarics as have lateral stalks, of such as are pectinate (_i. e._ have equal gills, like a comb), of such as have little flesh in proportion to the depth of their gills, and generally, of all those that are past their prime. Some warn us not to eat after the snail, as we are in the habit of doing in our gardens after the wasp; we may trust, it seems, to him to point out the best greengages, but not to the slug to select our mushrooms for us. Finally, it has been very currently affirmed, though I think without sufficient warrant, that all such funguses as run rapidly into deliquescence ought to be avoided as dangerous. Here, while it might be unsafe to lay down any positive rule beyond one’s own experience, this, so far as it goes, would rather lead me to a different inference; and even the reader will ask—Does not the mushroom deliquesce, and is not ketchup, that “poignant liquor made from boiled mushrooms mixed with salt,”[89] to which we are all so partial, this very deliquescence? But, besides this, the _Ag. comatus_, which is highly deliquescent, is largely eaten about Lucca; the _Ag. atramentarius_ also is, on our own authority, _periculo ventris nostri_, 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 perhaps 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[90] 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 determine 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, 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,[91] 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.[92]

The effects produced by the poison of mushrooms are exceedingly 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 affections 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.”[93] Not unfrequently, as in those cases cited by Larber, the symptoms have been altogether those of cholera, without any cerebral disturbance whatever; but in other instances that have come to my knowledge, during a several years’ residence on the Continent, these have been of a mixed character,[94] in which both the head and viscera have participated; and the autopsies after death have, in accordance with the symptoms, shown the stomach and intestines more or less disorganized with the products of inflammation, together with a congested state of the brain or of its investments, or a local or general softening of its substance.[95] The poison, as has been said, exists in very different degrees of intensity in different species. In some, as the _Amanita verna_, a few grains of the fresh fungus suffice to kill a dog;[96] while the _Agaricus muscarius_, though equally fatal in sufficient quantities, is not nearly so strong. Some time in general elapses from the swallowing the poison to that in which its deleterious workings first begin to be felt. I have heard of cases (similar to those cited in the last note) of persons who had supped overnight on the meal that was to prove their last, who have slept, risen next morning, gone to work, and continued working for hours, before they have been made aware of their condition. When, however, the symptoms have once set in, they become rapidly more and more alarming, while the chances of arresting or mitigating their excruciating severity lessen every minute. As the evils to be apprehended from the agency of these plants can only be prevented by their instant evacuation, to assist the disposition to vomit, or, if called in early enough, to anticipate it by the milder emetics in sufficient doses (surely not by strong ones, as some have recommended!), and, when the stomach has been thoroughly evacuated, to relieve the violence of the pain by bland mucilaginous drinks, with opiates, are the indications plainly pointed out, and the means by which inflammation and subsequent sphacelus of the gut, as well as the deleterious effects produced on the nervous system by the absorption of the poison into it, have been occasionally averted; but should symptoms of great depression be already present (as too frequently happens before the medical man arrives), he will endeavour, in that case, to rally the vital powers (scanty though the chances of success will then be) by small and repeated doses of sulphuric ether and ammonia combined, or should head symptoms require his interference, he must in that case bleed.

CONDITIONS NECESSARY TO THEIR GROWTH.

Of these, in fact, we know but little, and in the great majority of instances absolutely nothing; in a few cases moisture[97] and heat seem alone sufficient, even in our own hands, to cause some of them to grow; in others, electricity appears indispensable. A wet autumn is generally found to be exceedingly prolific in these plants, with the following notable difference as to _kind_: all those that are parasitical on trees show themselves, during a wet season, in amount directly varying with that of the previous rain, irrespective of any other influences conspiring to give this effect; whilst those, on the other hand, which issue from the earth, when the surface of this has been long chilled or when the electrical state of the air has not been materially modified for some time, will be found to come up sparingly or not at all, whatever rain may have fallen. An exception to this rule occurs in the common mushroom, which, by the combination of certain degrees of heat and moisture, may be reared throughout the year without the co-operation of electricity. A variety of plans have been recommended for this purpose, many of which are both troublesome and expensive; the following, taken by M. Roques from a scientific work on gardening, and said to be infallible, has, if so, the great advantage of extreme simplicity to recommend it:—“Having observed that all those dunghills which abounded chiefly in sheep- or cow-droppings, began shortly to turn mouldy on their surface and to bear mushrooms, I collected a quantity of this manure, which, so soon as it began to turn white, I strewed lightly over some melon-beds and some spring crops of vegetables, and obtained in either case, and as often as I repeated the experiment, a ready supply of excellent mushrooms, 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.’ Cesalpinus 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 transferring 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 properly 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.[98]

A third fungus, which we have the means of producing _ad libitum_, is that which sprouts from the pollard head of the black poplar;[99] these heads it is usual to remove at the latter end of autumn, as soon as the vintage is over, and their marriage with the vine is annulled; hundreds of such heads are then cut and transported to different parts; they are abundantly watered during the first month, and in a short time produce that truly delicious fungus, _Agaricus caudicinus_, the _Pioppini_, which, during the autumn of the year, make the greatest show in many of the Italian market-places. These pollard blocks continue to bear, for from twelve to fourteen years; I saw a row of them in the botanic garden at Naples, which, after this period, were still productive, though less frequently, and of fewer Agarics at a crop. The practice of rearing funguses from the poplar is not modern; Dioscorides knew, for he tells us that if we “bark the white or black poplar, cutting the bark into pieces and covering it with horse-dung, an excellent kind of fungus will spring up, and continue to bear throughout the year:” by way of comment to which passage Mathiolus adds, that a little leaven[100] will produce an abundant crop in four days. Another fungus, which I have myself reared (_Polyporus avellanus_), is to be procured by singeing over a handful of straw a block of the cob-nut tree, which is then to be watered and put by. In about a month the funguses make their appearance, which are quite white, of from two to three inches in diameter, and excellent to eat; while their profusion is sometimes so great, as entirely to hide the wood from which they spring.[101] 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 something 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 unsuccessful 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 attempts generally failed. My friend Mrs. Hussey, in particular, acquaints me that she has been in the habit of subjecting many plants to a like experiment, and with similar want of result. Lastly, as concerning truffles, Mr. Bornholtz 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 he, “with oak leaves in decay; you must also mix some iron with it and take care to make it of a proper consistence, either 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 _Carpinus 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 ourselves 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 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.[102]

ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF FUNGUSES.

“Ins Innre der Natur dringt kein erschaffner Geist,
Zu glücklich wem sie nur die äussre Schale lösst.”—_Haller._

It would be an insult to the reader’s understanding, and a most idle waste of his time, to attempt to confute such self-destroying dogmas as those of “spontaneous” or of “equivocal” generation, which last is only a clumsy _équivoque_ expressive 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 objection 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 interesting 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 nutrition, 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 bodily 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 cannot, 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 frequently 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 particular 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 development is to be effected? Some writers take one view, some another. Many believe the seeds of funguses to come directly from the earth,[103] 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 particular 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 flourishing 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 enthralled 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.[104] 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, some mycologists have separated funguses from the family of the clandestinely married _Cryptogamia_, to place them with the _Agamia_, which repudiate the marriage tie;[105] but as every argument 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.

SPORES OR SEEDS.

All funguses have not seeds,—at least, seeds apparent to us;[106] but if we reflect that these, even where visible, can do no more than present to our senses the visible tabernacle of that life which is still invisible, and which, not being material, must ever elude our search,[107] then it will not appear so difficult to conceive that the apparently seedless threads of some particular 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 _Agyrium_, 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, oblong, 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 dimensions of the future plant. They vary, too, greatly in colour, being sometimes of a pure white, and continuing so throughout 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.[108] 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 _thecæ_, the latter _sporanges_; thecæ (which are in shape similar to the cases of the same name that used to receive the ancient εἱλίγματα, or scrolls) are small, cylindrical bodies, in which the seeds lie _one over the other, as in a rouleau_; 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 thecæ, or _paraphyses_, between those that are fertile. _Sporanges_ are little globose or turbinated receptacles, frequently furnished with a pedicle, in which the seeds lie without order, as they are themselves inserted symmetrically, 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 Helvellæ 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 deliquescent kind, return to the earth mixed up with the black liquid into which these ultimately resolve themselves. Sometimes 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 _Pezizæ_, 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 capable of altering their forms, and that according to the accidents 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 evidence against it; nature acts by immutable laws and has no changelings. To appeal to experience, when did mushrooms ever spawn toadstools? When was the _Pietra funghaia_ ever seen to bring forth anything but its own Polyporus? or the fig, the poplar, or the hazel (when singed and watered to render them prolific) exhibit any but their own particular mushroom? Spores are endowed, like other seeds, with an extraordinary vitality, which may lie dormant in them for an indefinite period; but unlike most other seeds, they seem capable of resisting the prolonged heat of boiling water, infused in which, and poured upon the ground, they are still capable of producing each after its kind. The specific gravity of spores is greater than that of water, as may be seen by placing a mushroom over a glass which contains it, when, falling upon the surface, they presently subside to the bottom. These spores sometimes merely multiply without any further progress in development; sometimes they proceed a certain way only, and then, the conditions necessary for their further advance failing, this is arrested; sometimes, as in the _Sistotrema_, the plant _appears twice_ under a _perfect_ form, being for part of its existence a _Hydnum_, and during the other half a _Boletus_; but, generally speaking, these minute corpuscular bodies are destined to receive an infinite variety of protean and imperfect forms, and to pass stage by stage, and step by step, to the full attainment of that ultimate one which they assume when their growth has reached its natural limits. Sometimes the spore expands outright into a puff-ball; sometimes it shoots up straight into a club, as in some of the Clavarias; or lies like a bowl, resupinate on the ground and stalkless, as in the _Peziza_; in other cases, it assumes the more perfect but much less simple forms of _Chanterelle_, _Boletus_, _Dædalea_, _Morel_, or _Mushroom_.

DEVELOPMENT OF SEEDS.