294 VITALITY OF SEEDS. 
under artificial stimulation and protection, and finally become 
hardy enough to maintain an independent existence in very 
different circumstances from those which at present seem essen- 
tial to their life. 
Besides this, although the accounts of the growth of seeds, 
which have lain for ages in the ashy dryness of Egyptian cata- 
combs, are to be received with great caution, or, more proba- 
bly, to be rejected altogether, yet their vitality seems almost 
imperishable while they remain in the situations in which nature 
deposits them. When a forest old enough to have witnessed 
the mysteries of the Druids is felled, trees of other species 
conditions upon which the life or vigorous growth of smaller organisms de- 
pends. Particular species of truffles and of mushrooms are found associated 
with particular trees, without being, as is popularly supposed, parasites deriv- 
ing their nutriment from the dying or dead roots of those trees. The success 
of Rousseau’s experiments seem decisive on this point, for he obtains larger 
crops of truffles from ground covered with young seedling oaks than from that 
filled with roots of old trees. See an article on Mont Ventoux, by Charles 
Martins, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, Avril, 1863, p. 626. 
It ought to be much more generally known than it is, that most if not all 
mushrooms, even of the species reputed poisonous, may be rendered harmless 
and healthful as food by soaking them for two hours in acidulated or salt 
water. The water requires two or three spoonfuls of vinegar or two spoon- 
fuls of gray salt to the quart, and a quart of water is enough for a pound of 
sliced mushrooms. After thus soaking, they are well washed in fresh water, 
thrown into cold water, which is raised to the boiling-point, and, after re- 
maining half an hour, taken out and again washed. Gérard, to prove that 
‘ crumpets is wholesome,” ate one hundred and seventy-five pounds of the 
most poisonous mushrooms thus prepared, in a single month, fed his family 
ad libitum with the same, and finally administered them, in heroic doses, to 
the members of a committee appointed by the Council of Health of the city 
of Paris. See Fiaurmr, L’ Année Scientifique, 1862, pp. 353, 384. It should be 
observed that the venomous principle of poisonous mushrooms is not decom- 
posed and rendered innocent by the process described in the note. It is merely 
extracted by the acidulated or saline water employed for soaking the plants, 
and care should be taken that this water be thrown away out of the reach 
of mischief. 
It has long been known that the Russian peasantry eat, with impunity, 
mushrooms of species everywhere else regarded as very poisonous. Is it not 
probable that the secret of rendering them harmless—which was known to 
Pliny, though since forgotten in Italy—is possessed by the rustic Muscovites ? 
