1902J Webster, — Certain Eaters of Mushrooms yj 



CERTAIN EATERS OE MUSHROOMS. 



Hollis Webster. 



With three feet of snow under foot in the woods one hardly has 

 an eye out for mushrooms. Nothing was farther from my thoughts, 

 one bright clay last February, as I was laboring up one of the hills 

 in Jackson, New Hampshire. As I caught the end of a convenient 

 fir branch a little a head of me to pull myself a step or two higher 

 up the slope, I noticed something familiar fixed in a fork. Scramb- 

 ling up to it, I recognized — or thought I did — the remnant of a 

 Tricholoma, a fragment of stem and pileus, nibbled at the edges, 

 and dry as a chip. " Squirrels," I said to myself ; for I had often 

 seen red squirrels laying up bits of mushrooms in this way. In the 

 late autumn they are often very busy cutting and carrying off stores 

 of mushroom food to neighboring trees and bushes, where they lodge 

 them under protecting ends of bark, or in convenient forks. Just 

 the object of this bestowal of the food I have been unable to make 

 out. They leave it exposed, and, as my bit of Tricholoma showed, 

 sometimes abandon it altogether. To stay their appetite while 

 working, they often take a mushroom lunch, seated on a convenient 

 stump or tussock, leaving behind them scattered crumbs, and dis- 

 carded stems. I have watched them making havoc with a fine 

 clump of Tricholoma portentosum which I might not have seen had 

 they not scratched away the pine needles under which it was 

 hidden. Has anyone ever seen gray squirrels similarly busy, or 

 engaged in eating fungi ? 



Though the larvae of insects are no doubt the most confirmed 

 mushroom-eaters, there must be many other animals that feed upon 

 them. It would be interesting to know how many. One would sup- 

 pose that rabbits might find them toothsome. Mr. Peck suggests 

 that deer feed upon certain kinds — for instance, Ar miliaria melka, 

 Cattle are said to browse occasionally on Agaricus campcstris — 

 and perhaps on other kinds — as, for instance, a heavy, fleshy Armil- 

 laria, about which there is a tale from Maine. I know that cattle are 

 not afraid to eat even a poisonous species, as the following instance 

 will show. 



Two summers ago in Alstead, New Hampshire, as I was passing 

 among the scattered bushes in an upland pasture, I was escorted by 



