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NOTES ON THE EDIBLE FUNGI OF ITALY. 

 By A. S. BicKNELL, F.L.S. 



It is an admitted fact that Achilles sometimes laid aside his armour ; 1 trust, 

 therefore, that it may be a relaxation to the members of the Woolhope Club for 

 once to quit their wonted scientific labours in fungology, to follow the less intri- 

 cate path in which I wish to lead them. 



Some of you tax your eyesight by peering through microscopes at spores or 

 cells as difficult to examine as the almost invisible microbe of the celebrated Dr. 

 Koch ; others, less curious, but equally zealous, study the giant fungi of our own 

 Woolhopean Dr. Koch, — for Koch and Cooke, as you well know, are synonymous 

 — co-equals in fame. Some of you are learned in oosphores, uredines, or perhaps 

 British nidularia ; truly it may be said that nothing is too minute, nothing too 

 gigantic, for such enthusiastic scientists, and that you touch nothing which you do 

 not adorn. What then is there for the humble visitor to do who would fain add 

 his quota to the general lore ? I think there may yet be corners of the fungological 

 domain where greater light may fall, and one of these I hope to show. 



In every science there is a department strictly scientific, usually abstruse, and 

 there is generally another in which all with average observant faculties may, as 

 it were, stroll and render service. In fungology it has certainly always been so. 

 For years the popular statements concerning fungi, with their terrors and their 

 superstitions, were almost all we had to read, and as fungological studies assumed 

 their proper botanical position, through our better knowledge of structure and 

 classification, fascinated by scientific discoveries, we somewhat neglected to rectify 

 the popular beliefs of our forefathers ; the wondrous stories of hecatombs of 

 poisoned families still circulated, ill contradicted, in the autumn papers, and the 

 credulous public to this day believe that a couple of grammes (say l-15th of an 

 ounce,) of any toadstool for breakfast, will be followed by delirium, coma, and 

 death, which no injection of stramonium or of atropine can avert. 



We, of course, have long grown out of this early creed, but, in my opinion, 

 there is still too much romance remaining ; from author to author the same wild 

 inaccuracies are passed on, till, from being printed so often, they become stereo- 

 typed by bare assertion. It struck me then that it would not be wholly waste of 

 time if I were to revise the hallowed statements concerning the sale and commer- 

 cial value of fungi in Italy, and correct to modern date the antique and omnivorous 

 assertions of the enthusiastic Badham. 



I propose to tell you what species are at present authorised by law to be sold 

 in the public markets of the great cities of the peninsula ; what species I have 

 seen in them ; and, inasmuch as what has been said concerning these edible 

 Italian fungi rests almost exclusively on the text of Vittadini, dressed up in 

 English by Badham, I shall confine my remarks to those authors, first reminding 

 you that Dr. Vittadini published his excellent book at Milan in 1835, and that 



