ON SOME COMMON SPECIES OP EATABLE MUSHROOMS. 47 



It can be cooked so as to resemble beef-steak ; and its juice can 

 hardly be distinguished from beef -gravy. If persons who profess 

 vegetarian principles would teach our peasantry how to make use 

 of Oak-tongues, many a poor man's table might be supplied with 

 a substitute for beef, almost identical in taate and quality, and 

 costing nothing. 



Legendary history relates that the ancient Druids were wont, 

 at certain seasons, to cut some parasite off oak-trees with golden 

 sickles and much ceremony. This parasite is always called 

 mistletoe. Now, who ever saw mistletoe growing on the oak ? It 

 never does grow on that tree — except in the year of the Greek 

 Kalends, perhaps ! Has not the name of the parasite been wrongly 

 translated ? Doubtless ! The author conceives that it was the 

 Oak-tongue which the Druids cropped, not the useless Mistletoe. 

 And he has little doubt that many a rare feast on its succulent 

 flesh used to be held by the Druids in the mystic recesses of their 

 forest temples ! 



The Spindleshank (26). This species is easy of recognition, 

 and is thoroughly good and wholesome. It grows in dense tufts 

 about the foot of trees, chiefly of oaks. The points that distinguish 

 it are : — A dark chestnut brown colour of Pileus and Stem ; pale umber 

 or drab-coloured gills, which are serrated and crowded ; and a Stem 

 which is long, spirally twisted, large in the middle, and tapered off at 

 both ends. When the Spindleshank is to be prepared fresh, the 

 caps only should be used ; but stem and cap can be used when it 

 is pickled. It is an excellent mushroom, and is both common 

 and plentiful. 



The Chantarelle (81). Few mushrooms can be so readily recog- 

 nised as this, and once known it is impossible to mistake any 

 other for it. The Chantarelle grows in woodlands and parks, and 

 its distinguishing features are these: An irregular shape; gills 

 like wrinkled folds or plaits ; a uniform bright, golden-yellow colour ; 

 a scent like that of plums or apricots. It is a supremely excellent 

 viand, in high estimation among mushroom epicures. In Con- 

 tinental markets it fetches a high price, though plentiful there 

 as here. Finding it often in quantities near London, the author 

 has sometimes presented basketfuls to his French and German 

 friends in the metropolis, to their great gratification. But when he 

 has proffered it to his own countrymen, he has usually encountered 

 contemptuous scorn ; so deep is the fungophobic superstition. An 

 English lady once told him that Chantarelles " looked so awfully 



