TOADSTOOLS AND THEIR KINDRED. 141 



mushrooms in this country, we quote from a communication of the late 

 Dr. Curtis, of South Carolina, in reply to inquiries of Rev. C. Berkeley : 



" My experience with eatable mushrooms runs back only ten or twelve years. 

 As I had grown up with the common prejudices against them, and had no lack 

 of wholesome food, I had passed middle life before having once tasted a mush- 

 room." Under the guidance of Mr. Berkeley he became interested in them, and 

 overcame his timidity, and, at the time of writing, he adds: "I can safely say 

 that I have eaten a greater variety of mushrooms than any one on the American 

 Continent." After describing his mode of experimenting, and the various spe- 

 cies he had proved, he continues : " I have collected and eaten forty species found 

 within two miles of my house. There are some others within this limit which I 

 have not yet eaten. In the catalogue of the plants of North Carolina you will 

 notice that I have indicated 111 species of edible fungi known to inhabit this 

 State. I have no doubt there are forty or fifty more, as the Alpine portion of 

 the State, which is very extensive and varied, has been very little explored in 

 search of fungi. 



" In 1866, while on the Cumberland Mountains in Tennessee, a plateau less 

 than 1,000 feet above the valleys below, although having very little leisure for 

 examination during the two days spent there, I counted eighteen edible fungi. 

 Of the four or five species which I collected there for the table, all who partook 

 of them, none of whom had before eaten mushrooms, most emphatically declared 

 them delicious. On my return homeward, while stopping for a few hours at a 

 station in Yirginia, I gathered eight good species within a few hundred yards of 

 the depot. And so it seems to be throughout the country. Hill and plain, 

 mountain and valley, woods, fields, and pastures, swarm with a profusion of 

 good, nutritious fungi, which are allowed to decay where they spring up, be- 

 cause people do not know how, or are afraid, to use them. . 



" I have known no instance of mushroom-poisoning in this country, except 

 where the victims rashly ventured upon the experiment without knowing one 

 species from another. There are families in America who have brought with 

 them from Europe the habit of eating mushrooms, but I have not met with any 

 whose knowledge of them extended beyond the common species, called pink- 

 gills, in this country. Several such families live near me, but not one of them was 

 aware, until I informed them, that there are other edible kinds. "When I first 

 sent my son with a fine basket of imperials to an intelligent physician, who was 

 extravagantly fond of the common mushroom, the lad was greeted with the in- 

 dignant exclamation: 'Boy, I wouldn't eat one of those things to save your 

 father's head!" When told that they were eaten at my table, he accepted 

 them, ate them, and has eaten many a one since with all safety, and Avith no 

 little rehsh." 



Among our best and standard mushrooms, Dr. Curtis mentions the 

 meadow, the horse, and umbrella mushrooms, but adds: 



" Tastes differ on these things as on fruits and vegetables ; some putting one, 

 some another, at the head of the list, though fond of all, and ever ready to use 

 any of them, as one who prefers a peach may yet relish an apple. There are 

 some among us who regard the umbrella-mushroom as fully equal to the meadow- 

 mushroom, and I am of the same opinion. When boiled or fried, it truly makes 

 a luscious morsel, I mention, in this connection, that this species here bears the 

 name of nut-mushroom, fi-om a quality that I do not find mentioned in the books 



