286 VITALITY OF SEEDS. 



positively say that the felling of the woods in a given vegetable 

 province would involve the final extinction of the smaller plants 

 which are found only within their precincts. Some of these, 

 though not natm-ally propagating themselves in the open ground, 

 may perhaps germinate and grow under artificial stimulation and 

 protection, and finally become hardy enough to maintain an in- 

 dependent existence in very different circumstances from those 

 which at present seem essential 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 probably, 

 to be rejected altogether, yet their vitality seems almost imper- 

 ishable while they remain in the situations in which nature depos- 

 its them. When a forest old enough to have witnessed the mys- 

 teries of the Druids is felled, trees of other species spring up in 

 its place ; and when they, in their tm-n, fall before the axe, some- 

 times even as soon as they have spread their protecting shade over 

 the surface, the germs which their predecessors had shed years, 



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 Mbndes, 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 harm- 

 less 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. Gerard, 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 Figtjier, L'Annee Scientifique, 1862, pp. 353, 384. It should 

 be observed that the venomous principle of poisonous mushrooms is not de- 

 composed 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 f 



