204 The Scottish Naturalist. 



colours; while formerly they yielded the principal drugs of the phar- 

 macopeia when the principle of similia similibus curantur reigned 

 in medicine. Fungi though too often the sources of plagues 

 and epidemics affecting plants and animals, not excepting man 

 himself, and fearfully destructive in their ravages form the leaven 

 so necessary in the baking of our bread and in the manufacture of 

 fermented liquors. A few, like the ergot of rye, are endowed with 

 valuable medical properties ; and a very large number yield an 

 abundant supply of palatable and nutritious food. No country 

 perhaps is richer in edible fungi than Great Britain ; but such is 

 the extent of direful ignorance and silly prejudice regarding them, 

 arising from their cold, moist, clammy nature and the disagreeable 

 situations in which they often grow, that this savoury and 

 important food is year after year allowed to perish ungathered in 

 the woods and fields. In these days of commercial depression, 

 when severe economy has to be practised, and many of our 

 labouring population are reduced to sore straits, these esculent 

 fungi might be gathered either for sale or for personal consumption, 

 and would form a by no means insignificant item in the day's 

 earnings or in the day's bill of fare. In America during the late 

 civil war the edible fungi of the country were extensively used as 

 food by the troops, and helped in the scarcity of other rations to 

 keep up their vigour. It is in order to encourage this popular 

 utilisation of fungi that the annual meetings of our Cryptogamic 

 Society have been held in September or October, when these 

 plants are most numerous and luxuriant ; and it were wished that 

 their efforts in diffusing such useful knowledge were aided and 

 supplemented locally by the teachers of Board schools. There 

 are at least sixty kinds of esculent fungi in Great Britain which 

 may be safely used at table, and are as good if not better than the 

 common mushroom which appears to be the only species whose 

 merits are at all appreciated, although, strange to say, it is on the 

 Continent rigidly excluded by the inspectors of markets on account 

 of its unwholesome qualities. There is the chantarelle with its rich 

 .orange trumpet-shaped cap and veins; the blewitts, occurring 

 abundantly in old pastures during the winter months and often 

 growing frequently in large rings ; the liver fungus growing on 

 oak stools ; the champignon, or Scotch bonnets, which form the 

 bare circles in the grassy meadows called fairy-rings. " I have 

 myself," says Dr. Badham in his work on the Esculent Fungi of 



