CHAPTER II 



Characteristics of the Common 



Edible Mushroom, Agaricus 



campestris 



Doubtless many consumers of mush- 

 rooms and even some persons with country- 

 life interests would scarcely recognize the 

 common mushroom as it grows naturally 

 in lawns or pastures. Their conception of 

 mushrooms is often merely the picture of 

 the market product en masse, or of the 

 partly bleached buttons which constitute 

 many grades of the canned material. It is, 

 however, almost as easy to distinguish the 

 common Agaricus from other fleshy fungi 

 as it is to distinguish the wild rose from the 

 bramble, once a definite concept of it is ob- 

 tained. Children quickly learn to tell one 

 species of bird or butterfly from another if 



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