CHAPTER VEE 
FUNGUSES 
You may perhaps feel at first that this chapter might be 
omitted from a book on Botany, or at least that it must 
be very brief. Mushrooms and truffles perhaps deserve 
to be included, for they are good to eat, but surely very 
few others. Even from the eating. point of view, how- 
ever, there are several other kinds or species which are 
worth knowing, though I do not advise careless experi- 
ment, for some are most deadly poisons. I have tried 
thin slices of the larger puff-balls fried in butter, and if 
anyone has a taste for fried boot-soles, this dish should 
meet their views exactly. But the edible aspect is of 
very small importance when compared with other con- 
siderations. Our own bodily health and disease are most 
intimately connected with this group of the vegetable 
kingdom. Its members bring the most terrible blights 
and pestilences, and may leave lasting effects upon history. 
You may remember the Black Death in England in the 
reign of Edward III., which carried off one-third of the 
population, gave one of the motives for Wat Tyler’s 
rebellion, weakened us in our wars with France, and 
permanently altered the conditions of labour. Well, all 
this was caused by the invasion of one kind of fungus. 
On the other hand, the whole of recent Irish history 
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