ORDER AGARICALES 



505 



C. atramentarius may cause quite severe poisoning if alcoholic beverages 

 (beer or wine, as well as distilled liquors) have been drunk shortly before 

 or within several hours after eating the fungi. The method of preparation 

 may have considerable effect upon the poisonous nature of some species. 

 Parboiling and pouring off the water will often remove the poison but not 

 in all cases. Of course almost all fungi which have reached the state of 

 incipient decay are dangerous. This is the basis of the "silver spoon" test, 

 for the blackening of the silver surface is not due to the poison naturally 

 resident in the fungus but to the products of incipient decay. It is unsafe 

 to eat a fungus unless its identity is certain and then only perfectly fresh 

 specimens or dried unspoiled specimens. 



Botanically it is insisted that the words mushroom and toadstool 

 are practically synonymous and may be used indiscriminately for both 

 edible and poisonous species. It must be recognized, however, that orig- 

 inally the word toadstool was derived from a word meaning death's chair 

 (Todesstuhl). 



The poisonous principles in the Agaricaceae appear to belong to the 

 chemical groups of "toxalbumins" in some cases and alkaloids in others. 



Studies of the development of the spore fruits of centrally stipitate 

 members of this family show that with reference to the hymenial origin 

 they may be gymnocarpic, pseudoangiocarpic or truly angiocarpic. In the 

 first the hymenium is external from the beginning and never enclosed in a 

 cavity. At the upper part of the young columnar spore fruit the tissues 

 spread out laterally, to form the young pileus. On the under side of this 

 and often on the upper part of the stipe the hymenium begins to develop, 

 gradually producing radial folds, the gills. At maturity these bear the 

 mature basidia and basidiospores and are at no time cut off from the out- 

 side air by tissue of any kind. (Fig. 170 A-C.) In the pseudoangiocarpic 

 species development is as above at first, but the broadening pileus curves 

 downward at the edge and finally curves back to the stipe with which it 

 comes into loose contact or to which it becomes united by the intermin- 

 ghng of hyphae from the stipe and edge of the pileus. Thus a closed circular 

 cavity develops on whose roof the lamellae are produced and become 

 covered with the hymenium. At the approach of maturity the pileus 

 flattens out and its edge breaks free from the stipe, so that now the 

 hymenium with its ripening spores is exposed to the air. There may be 

 left on the stipe a collar (annulus) or the sheet of connecting tissues may 

 break away from the stipe and remain hanging at the edge of the pileus as 

 a cortina. This may be in broken sheets or like a spider web. (Fig. 170 

 D-G.) 



In the angiocarpic forms there develops within the tissues of the pileus 

 a circular layer of palisade cells, the hymenium primordium, on the lower 

 or inner side of which a circular cavity is formed into which the radiating 



