124 BRITISH EDIBLE FUNGI. 



There is present no other idea but that of the 

 pecuHar mushroom flavour, of the heavy mushroom 

 odour. All other species are approached with this 

 preconceived notion, are tested by this arbitrary test, 

 and failure is a result easily predicated. Against this 

 assumption too strong a protest cannot well be made. 

 No one presumes that all animal food is precisely the 

 same ; that beef and mutton and venison and fowl 

 are different names for the same thing. Each has 

 its own individual flavour, and no one seeks to com- 

 pare them with any other which may be arbitrarily 

 set up as the type of animal food. It is the same 

 with the edible fungi to a large extent, since each 

 kind has its own peculiarity and is the better for 

 a peculiar mode of treatment. It is simply courting 

 disappointment to anticipate that all are alike, except 

 in form and name, whilst in fact no two kinds are so 

 absolutely alike as to be indistinguishable by an 

 educated palate. Hence, then, it would follow that 

 the methods of preparation for the table may be sup- 

 posed to differ, and that a method which is the most 

 successful with one kind will not be the best for 

 another. These are details which experience will 

 soon impress upon us, and there is no more fitting 

 example for the test than the subject of the present 

 chapter. 



Subject to this reservation, that it is an esculent to 

 be judged solely on its own merits, we find Mrs 

 Hussey writing of it that " If it is not beef itself it is 



