252 THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB. 



more have begun, with an appeal to the stomach, and, having commenced, it was 

 not long before I was involved in the mysteries of the whole subject, and became 

 a fungologist. 



Some of my hearers may be curious to know what obstacles I had to encounter, 

 and how I managed to surmount them. My country farmer was not acquainted 

 with more than 20 or 30 species of fungi, so that he could do no more than give 

 me a start, and show me Badham's book on the Edible Funguses of Great 

 Britain. As for myself, I was living in Lambeth, and he was in Norfolk, so that 

 mutual instruction was at an end. 



How I got my early specimens I do not know, and the steps in my progress I 

 do not remember. There uas no "field club" in those days that I had any 

 knowledge of, until I started the " Society of Amateur Botanists " with a 

 subscription of five shillings a year, and then we went ahead. 



You must take into account the difference between 1854 and 1903 in f;icilities 

 for the study of such a difficult subject, of which all our best botanists were 

 profoundly ignorant — and, except perhaps Sir William Hooker, and his friend Dr. 

 Greville, unsympathetic. True there was the " facile princeps," the great 

 luminary, then beginning to be recognized, the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, but he 

 had written little, was rather unapproachable to students, and his satellites had 

 not begun to shine. 



The books which a poor and struggling student could have access to were 

 very limited. All that I can remember, as of any service to me, were Berkeley's 

 volume of Hooker's English Floia. The fourth edition of Withering's 

 Arrangement, Badham's book, and the numbers of the Gardener'^s Chronicle 

 after i860. 



There was certainly ]Mrs. Hussey's Illustrations and numerous continental 

 works with figures, but practically no coloured illustrations available, initil later 

 years, except the volume by Badham : others cost pounds, instead of shillings. 

 The two large coloured charts of Edible and Poisonous Fungi, by Worthingtou 

 Smith, came like rain upon a thirsty land in 1867. 



I can only ask you to compare the facilities which are offered to the student 

 of fungi at the present time with what they were fifty years ago, for you to 

 appreciate the difficulties and struggles which environed me when I first 

 ■determined to attack and conquer this stubborn subject, or die in the attempt. 

 But I did not die, although I tempted Providence by eating so many different 

 '•toadstools." Whether I succeeded in my conquest, it is not for me to judge, but 

 I think posterity will acquit me of making a conspicuous failure. 



It will be evident f^iom what I have said, why I have always encouraged 

 Field Clubs and individual wood-ramblers to interest themselves in Edible Fungi, 

 "but I am afraid that hitherto we have, perhaps, attempted too much at a time, 

 and that, instead of pointing out 50 or 60 Agarics as edible, we should have been 

 ■content to confine ourselves first of all to five or six species, and have them 

 universally known and appreciated, before attempting others. There are no 

 general rules by which an edible fungus can be distinguished at sight from a 

 poisonous one. It is the same with flowering plants. There is no general rule 

 whereby the novice may distinguish the foliage of Hemlock or Fool's Parsley from 

 true Parsley, the root of Monkshood from Horseradish, or the red berries of a 

 noxious from those of an innocuous plant. The only successful method is to 

 "become familiar with the plants themselves. Your country schoolboy, who has 

 ■only just learnt his alphabet, knows a pigeon from a crow, and a blackbird from a 



