EDIBLE NATIVE FUNGI. 149 



LECTURE AND MEETING FOR DISCUSSION. 



Saturday, March 23, 1895. 

 A Meeting for Lecture and Discussion was holden today at 

 eleven o'clock, the President, Nathanikl T. Kidder, in the chair. 

 The following paper was read by the author : 



Edible Native Fungi. 

 By Hon. John M. Kinnet, Boston. 



Prejudice is stronger than reason, and it is often impossible to 

 persuade men to do what is manifestly for their own interest, if 

 there is any lingering memory or superstition which attaches a 

 bad odor to the thing we want them to do. The tenacity with 

 which we cling to prejudice is illustrated by nothing better than 

 by the contempt and dread with which the community treats the 

 Fungus family, condemning all varieties as unfit to eat, excepting 

 the Agaricus campestris or Common Mushroom. 



English and European fungi have been carefully studied and 

 classified and their edible and poisonous qualities ascertained by 

 a few men of science and enterprise. Badham, Berkeley, Cooke, 

 Johnson, Smith, Bell, and Mrs. Hussey, have devoted a great 

 deal of time to the subject, and have published books with 

 profuse illustrations, showing to the eye by color and form what 

 their words fail to convey. No American has, until late years, 

 undertaken to publish any treatise on the subject. Now we have 

 the valuable work of Capt. Julius A. Palmer, Jr., with its fine 

 colored plates, and clear descriptions, which are full and complete, 

 and easy to comprehend, and the United States Agricultural 

 Reports of late years give considerable space to drawings and 

 descriptions, showing that the people are demanding information 

 in this regard. 



There is no fruit or vegetable which, in my opinion, possesses 

 the nutritive value of the mushroom. Badham, in his "Treatise 

 on the Esculent Funguses of England" says (p. 136), "I have 

 this autumn myself witnessed whole hundred-weights of rich, 

 wholesome diet rotting under trees ; woods teeming with food and 

 not one hand to gather it ; and this perhaps in the midst of potato 

 blight, poverty and all manner of privations and public prayers 

 against imminent famine." 



