iu that pleasant mood of confidence that would enable us to make a meal of it. A dozen large ones are said 

 to have produced soporific effects ! but a dozen of any large fungus would give a nightmare, one would think ; 

 so that merely a pleasant dreamy phase of the Koriac's muscarius debauch being produced by tliis, a near 

 relative, is rather in its favour since no worse followed. It is a curious fact, that several Agarics, of which 

 tliis is an instance, tasteless and scentless when crude, acquire by cooking a stronger animal flavour than 

 many of which the natural scent is powerful ; A. vaginatTis, broiled with butter, tastes extremely like meat. 

 Doubtless, the chemical properties of funguses are greatly modified by heat, and it may be that some 

 noxious quahties are thus neutralized ; but in the most fearfully and certainly poisonous of Agarics, a snow- 

 white, elegant, enticing Amanite, A. lihalloides, the bane, whatever it may be, is neither removed by the 

 process of cooking, nor remediable by skill when once imbibed. We have not in England the most prized 

 of tliis family, A. Ccesarius, and in Italy it is so much sought after, that to commit excess in eating it would 

 scarcely be probable. If Claudius, feasting as Roman emperors did, ate a " dozen large ones," there is no 

 occasion to suppose Locusta added any foreign mischief. It may be, that this delicacy was used as a bait 

 for the trap ; it may be, that if people of humbler station could afford to gormandize like a Roman emperor^ 

 the accumulated e^il principle latent in this Amanite would tell on their system, as it did on his ; and it may 

 be quite simply a case of surfeit ; but A. Cissarius will never regain, any more than A. vaginatws will 

 ever attain, that position above all questioning that ought to appertain to Cfesar's mushrooms as weU as 

 to his wife. 



Unless great care be taken to extricate it from the grass roots, this truly elegant Agaric will not be 

 properly displayed, with the white hose, the remauis of the veil, which originally wrapped over head and all, 

 like an egg, before it was ruptured by the expansive growth of the pileus. This section of the Amanites 

 have the ring obhterated, or are destitute of it ; wliile others, as A. niuscariiis, have a beautiful ring, but 

 the volva is not there ; they all, however, compose one family group. 



