Jihmgi- 225 



support from a Fungus that abounds in that island; and 

 Dr. Berkeley affirms that a species of Cyttaria is a staple 

 article of food among the Fuegians during several months 

 of the year. 



It may be said that such food is good enough for savages 

 and for those who cannot obtain better; that only persons 

 of gross habits and strong stomachs will resort to such a 

 diet. This objection might have some place were it not 

 for the fact that the most enlightened people do eat them, 

 that they often adorn the tables of the wealthy and refined, 

 that they are sometimes served up in England at the lead- 

 ing hotels on great public occasions, that those who have 

 tried them, like them, and find them not only less repul- 

 sive to the taste and the stomach but also to every sense of 

 delicacy, than are stale venison, oysters, lobsters, cased 

 sausages, disease breeding pork and other articles of a simi- 

 lar nature in common use. 



I take the liberty to quote the following lines from a 

 letter of an estimable correspondent : 



"There are people all over the country who would be 

 glad to eat mushrooms if they only knew how to discrimi- 

 nate them. Wherever I go I am called upon to teach people 



the right kinds. While in C last August, gentlemen 



and ladies had me out in the woods and fields with them every 

 day in search of these edibles. Within a small circuit there 

 I found twenty good sorts. Many persons who had never 

 before tasted them pronounced them l de-licious.' I know 

 persons about here, where we eat them by bushels in a year 

 who rather eat them than meat or oysters." Again he 

 writes : " There are a dozen families in this little borough, 

 that have a passionate love for mushrooms and eat all they 

 can get, some preferring them to every other edible." 



I can affirm from personal experience that some kinds, 

 so far from being coarse, unpalatable and indigestible, are 

 most savory, digestible and nutritious. Indeed from the pre- 



\_Trans. vi.} 29 



