10 ON THE DISCEIMINATION OF FUNGI. 



knowledge — that "we mtist laj especial stress upoii this feature. 

 If a right understanding of it be first of all implanted in the mind, 

 then any one may learn to recognise a few of the notable species 

 'safely and surely. The simplest rustic finds no difl&culty in appre- 

 hending the obvious differences between various trees, between 

 the sundry flowers and pot-herbs of the garden, or between the 

 weeds of the roadside. Yet people of good intelligence commonly 

 confuse all Fungi together, not regarding them in the same way 

 that they do other plants. It is here that the ground must be 

 cleared to begin with. People must be taught to consider one 

 species of Fungus as quite a different plant from another, to look 

 upon Fungi as they do upon the aggregation of plants in a garden, 

 a field, or a wood, as comprising many different kinds of vegetable, 

 distinguished from each other by many essential characteinstics, 

 as well as by mere external shape and colour. 



When the economic use of Fungi is the raain object of inquiry, 

 then Discrimination must be practised most rigorously. It is not 

 alone necessary that this should be done in order that noxious 

 plants may not be mistaken for wholesome esculents, but for the 

 sake of even more refined distinction. There are a great many 

 species of Fungi which we may use for food, but they have yery 

 various values. Two species may be equally wholesome, but, in 

 a culinary sense, or in a gastronomic sense, they may differ as 

 widely as does an apple from a cabbage. There are multitudes 

 of diversities among the Fungi that are fit for food. Similarly, 

 among those kinds which we call collectively " poisonous," there 

 are all sorts of differences. The noxious principles they contain 

 respectively have widely different action. The degree of their hurt- 

 fulness varies. Some are readily freed from their unwholesome 

 essences, while others retain theirs under all circumstances. 



The fact that no proper notion has been popularly entertained 

 respecting the total dissimilarity of species has led people to ask 

 if there were not some general rule or test by which edible mush- 

 rooms could be at once distinguished from noxious ones. To meet 

 this desire, sundry sets of precepts have been promulgated. Of 

 them it is sufficient to say that, being based on ignorance, they 

 are invariably erroneous and delusive. Some of them have been 

 given, too, on the authority of persons one would have expected 

 to find better informed. Any principle of selection of an arbitrary 

 sort can only have a very limited application, and is seldom 

 Avithout exceptions to it. Among Fungi we must judge of the 



