338 



Many people are not aware that a considerable num- 

 ber of our common fungi or "toadstools"* are valuable 

 articles of food, equal in nutritious elements to oysters, fish, 

 or flesh, which various forms of our native species resemble 

 in flavor and composition. 



I find many others who are well aware that certain forms 

 of mushrooms are useful for food, but are afraid to attempt 

 their use because they fear they will be poisoned by the use 

 of some unwholesome species. While it is a fact that many 

 species are unfit for food, and a certain few are undoubtedly 

 poisonous, this is no reason why we should neglect all 

 mushrooms as articles of food. It would be as senseless to 

 reject all kinds of berries because some berries are poison- 

 ous, or all kinds of root-foods because certain roots are 

 poisonous. While the discrimination of the many species 

 of fungi in a strictly scientific way is possible only to the 

 few, ceitain common fungi that are useful for food are as 

 readily distinguished from each other as currants are from 

 pokeberries, or wheat from barley. In Germany, children 

 are taught to discriminate the ordinary edible and poisonous 

 fungi as a part of their school training and they can easily 

 separate the edible forms from among a miscellaneous pile 

 of many species. It argues a lack of good common sense 

 for people to claim that they cannot learn how to distin- 

 guish one form of mushroom from another, for if they know 

 beans from corn they can learn to distinguish the more com- 

 mon forms of edible fungi so as to recognize them at sight. 



The species of fungi growing in the state of Alabama have 

 not yet been sufiiciently studied to give a complete list of the 

 edible species that occur here, nor even to indicate the forms 

 that are the most common during successive years. Rev. 

 M. A. Curtis who studied the fungous flora of North Caro- 

 lina for many years, published a list of over one hundred 



* Also called "frog stools" in some parts of Alabama. Some people 

 suppose that the so-called 'mushrooms" are edible while "toadstools" 

 are poisonous. We know no such distinction, and in different places 

 they are called either mushrooms or toadstools irrespective of their 

 edible or non-edible characters. 



