212 BRITISH EDIBLE FUNGI. 



If not in themselves poisonous, there are conditions 

 under which otherwise good species may cause incon- 

 venience through bad cooking, by which means they 

 may be rendered indigestible. It is quite possible for 

 mushrooms to be condemned as heavy and indigestible 

 when the fault does not rest with the fungus but with 

 the cook. 



In the case of puff balls of all kinds, it is a special 

 injunction that they should not be accepted as good 

 for food after the internal flesh shows the least 

 sulphury tinge. The flesh must always be of a con- 

 tinuous, uninterrupted white. 



Undoubtedly fungi which are considered poisonous 

 by us are eaten in Russia, but they have a method of 

 soaking, or preserving, fungi in vinegar, which may 

 serve to explain this anomaly, rather than by attribut- 

 ing it to any climatic conditions. If the poison is of 

 an alkaline nature there is no difficulty in believing 

 that maceration in acid would counteract mischievous 

 effects. 



There is much consolation for us who are addicted 

 to fungus eating, on something like scientific prin- 

 ciples, that when casualties do happen it is not upon 

 us that they fall. If the records of fungus poisoning 

 are studied, it will be found either that the victims 

 were children, or that they were reckless and stupid, 

 because in so many instances the result has accrued 

 through accepting as mushrooms things which hardly 

 remotely resembled them. Those who eat strange 



