428 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY. [Book XXI3 



CHAP. 46. MUSHROOMS: PECULIARITIES OF THEIR GROWTH. 



Among those vegetable productions which are eaten witl 

 risk, I shall, with good reason, include mushrooms ; 26 a verj 

 dainty food, it is true, but deservedly held in disesteem sinct 

 the notorious crime committed by Agrippina, who, through 

 their agency, poisoned her husband, the Emperor Claudius, 

 and at the same moment, in the person of his son Nero, in- 

 flicted another poisonous curse upon the whole world, herself 2 * 

 in particular. 



Some of the poisonous mushrooms are easily known, being 

 of a rank, unwholesome look, light red without and livid 

 within, with the clefts 27 considerably enlarged, and a pale, 

 sickly margin to the head. 28 These characteristics, however, 

 are not presented by others of the poisonous kinds ; but being 

 dry to all appearance and strongly resembling the genuine 

 ones, they present white spots upon the head, on the surface 

 of the outer coat. The earth, in fact, first produces the 

 uterus 28 * or receptacle for the mushroom, and then the mush- 

 room within, like the yolk in the egg. Nor is this envelope 

 less conducive to the nutrition of the young mushroom [than 

 is the albumen of the egg to that of the chicken.] Bursting 

 forth from the envelope at the moment of its first appearance, 

 as it gradually increases it becomes transformed into a sub- 

 stantial stalk ; it is but very rarely, too, that we find two grow- 

 ing from a single foot- stalk. The generative 29 principle of 

 the mushroom is in the slime and the fermenting juices of the 

 damp earth, or of the roots of most of the glandiferous trees. 

 It appears at first in the shape of a sort of viscous foam, and 

 then assumes a more substantial but membranous form, after 

 which, as already stated, the young mushroom appears. 



In general, these plants are of a pernicious nature, and the 



25 " Boleti." 26 She having heen put to death by him. 



27 " Rimosa stria." 



28 This description would apply to many of the fungi known as toad- 

 stools at the present day. 



28 * A true description, Fee says, of the agaric oronge, or the laseras 

 mushroom. 



29 The true origin of fungi has not been discovered till a compara- 

 tively recent period, since the days of Linnaeus even. It is now known 

 that they are propagated by microscopic granules which are lodged in 

 particular receptacles, or else by a dissolution and dispersion of their fila- 

 mentous tissues, 



