CHAPTER XV. 



Esculent Fungi. 



THE fungi are a most singular class of productions, 

 and their place in the kingdom of nature has been 

 made a subject of much discussion among physiol- 

 ogists. Some refer them to the animal, some to the 

 vegetable, and others to the mineral world; while 

 one naturalist* has asserted that the fungi ought to 

 be excluded from all these divisions and considered as 

 intermediate beings. It would be foreign to our sub- 

 ject to give any abstract of the different arguments 

 by which each party has supported his peculiar opin- 

 ion. In the present day it is tolerably well estab- 

 lished, and generally admitted, that the fungi are of 

 vegetable production. 



They have the habits of vegetables, but when ana- 

 lysed they yield the same products as animal matter, 

 and in a state of putrefaction give out a similar 

 odour. Ammonia, the phosphoric salts, and al- 

 bumen, very analogous to that of animals, are found 

 in the fungi. It might be supposed that such sub- 

 stances would be highly nutritious. This, however, 

 is not the fact, as they are among the most indi- 

 gestible of edibles. Most of them, when grown in 

 any situation, and all of them in some situations, are 

 hurtful and even poisonous. They differ from many 

 noxious vegetables in this, that their poison cannot be 

 separated by boiling, or even by distillation, which 

 has been satisfactorily proved by the experiments of 

 Parmentier. 



* Necker's Mycitologia. 

 VOL. XV. 28 



