54 
Downton, Stoke Edith, Dinmore, and Garnstone all alive in the first week of 
October there were not a number of diverse toadstools, wholly unfit for human 
food ; but a residuum of edible fungi was tried, tested, and not found fault with 
by the guests at the public dinner on the first of the month, who; though dis- 
appointed of the presence of the Rey. M. J. Berkeley, the chief of English myco- 
logists, included in their number those scarcely less eminent authorities, Messrs. 
Broome, Renny, and Houghton, to say nothing of that skilful delineator and 
describer of fungus-growths, Mr. Worthington Smith, F.L.S. The proceedings 
of the evening included a merited recognition of the assistance rendered to the 
Club by this gentleman, whose two sheets distinguishing edible from poisonous 
fungi, with the key appertaining to them (published by Hardwicke), are still the 
most useful guide to the amateur fungus-hunter, though for more advanced 
inquirers the manuals of Berkeley and Cook, and, for the more classically 
minded, the charming volume of Dr. Badham, are doubless more suitable. The 
delicately-served Marasmius oreades, or ‘‘ Fairy Ring Champignon,” enabled the 
veteran Mr. Lees to return for the hundredth time to his ‘‘ molar” theory as to 
fairy rings; the orange-milked mushroom (Lactarius deliciosus) justified its title, 
after skilful cooking and a good deal of salting and peppering ; and if on this occasion 
we failed to experiment upon the scaly agaric (Procerus), the beef-steak that is 
cut to order from half way up the oak (Festulina hepatica), or the Boletus edulis, 
(not that in favour with the elder Roman gourmands, though very popular with 
their remote posterity), or even the Giant Puffball (Lycoperdon giganteum), it is 
simply because, in the case of fungus-tasting as in everything else, “‘non omnia 
possumus omnes.” The Lactarius deliciosus ought to be good, to judge from its 
name; and its beauty of colouring and deep orange milk so completely dis- 
tinguish it from the dangerous L. torminosus, the deadly and ruddy L, rufus, the 
fragrant and rare L. glyciosmus, L, controversus (a species not uncommonly 
found under the black poplar, but on this occasion discovered by Dr. McCullough 
under a Lombardy poplar at Garnstone), and the L. Vitellinus, which, notwith- 
standing its epithet, is not good for food, that there need not be slightest hesita- 
tion in tasting it, even raw. Dr. Badham’s plan of baking the Deliciosus, after 
due application of salt, pepper, and butter, for three-quarters of an hour in a 
covered pie-dish, is doubtless a preferable mode of experimenting upon this deli- 
cacy. Our own experience of it is not so fortunate as to enable us to rank it with 
the most appetizing of culinary fungi; nor can we mention it in the same day 
with slices of the Giant Puffball, when, after the removal of their outer integu- 
ment, they are dipped in yolk of egg, and then fried in fresh butter. In all such 
experiments it is obviously unfair to try other than quite fresh and young 
specimens, and there ought to be no necessity for cautioning even the uninitiated 
against cooking the Puffball when it is yellow and rotten inside, or indeed when 
its snow-white exterior is beginning to change to a suspicious yellow. Several 
of the rarer Lactarii mentioned above were either found in this year’s forays 
at Hereford, or were brought thither to adorn the sideboard at the festival. 
A word must be added about the ‘Comatus” soup. What boy or girl 
