No. 12. 



The Esculent Funguses of England. 



365 



his natural food is neglected, and at the same 

 time every sort of trash is greedily devoured; 

 eating his oivn excrement is an early symp- 

 tom, and so sure a one, that the moment a 

 dog is seen doing so he should be destroyed, 

 or at all events confined. If he rubs his 

 paws against the sides of his mouth to re- 

 move a bone, the mouth will remain open; 

 but when his doing this is the precursor of 

 rabies, the jaws close after the rubbing 

 ceases. There soon follows an insatiable 

 thirst, so insatiable that the poor animal of- 

 ten plunges his whole muzzle into the wa- 

 ter; and here you may observe spume left 

 upon the surface. Soon the dog falls or 

 staggers, and sometimes, but not invariably, 

 becomes delirious. Death speedily ensues." 



An anonymous author states that a really 

 mad dog on being pursued displays no signs 

 of fear, generally going, if not impeded, in 

 a straight line against the wind, at a brisk 

 trot, wholly unconcerned at the shouts of its 

 pursuers, and does not curl the tail in any 

 direction, but carries it drooping. He adds, 

 that a dog that curls its tail is certainly not 

 mad. Some say that a mad dog will often 

 worrey a stone; and that when he is struck,! 

 he never growls, but is quiet. 



It appears that rabies in dogs is sometimesj 

 cured, for a dog having bitten a man, tlie 

 man died, but the dog recovered. Again,! 

 there have been instances in France of dogsj 

 being bitten by mad foxes, without catching 

 the disease. 



A slight scratch from the tooth of a mad 

 dog is as dangerous as a bite, and so also is 

 its being sifFered to lick the hands or face. 

 Some time since a lady of rank died of hy- 

 drophobia, contracted by permitting her pam- 

 pered French poodle to lick lier face, on 

 which she happened to have a sore pimple, 

 which of courrie imbibed the virus. When 

 a person is bitten through his clothes, there 

 is less danger, as the teeth of the animal be- 

 come wiped or cleaned in passing through 

 the cloth. The wound made by a mad doij 

 heals, like any other wound, but considerable 

 pain extends from it along the course of the 

 nerve, and not of the absorbents, which are 

 never affected. The common and decisive 

 symptoms of hydrophobia in man are, at 

 first, dejection of spirits, increasing from 

 melancholy to fury, spasms of the muscles, 

 of the throat and chest, an extraordinary 

 aversion to the name and sight of liquids, 

 and an excessive flow of spittle. Between 

 the infliction of the wound and the appear- 

 ance of any symptoms, some time elapses; 

 generally, the disease shows itself between 

 the twentieth and fortieth day; occasionally 

 it appears at a shorter or at a much longer 

 interval. In a hundred and thirty cases it 



was remarked that it commonly appeared at 

 some period between one and three months. 

 It rarely evinced itself after the fourth month. 

 Cases, however, are reported of the virus re- 

 maining for a much longer time in the con- 

 stitution. Thus, in the Philosophical Tians- 

 actums, a case is mentioned of a man attiicked 

 with hydrophobia, nmeteen months after rlic 

 bite. We are also required to believe that 

 in a case which occurred under Dr. Burdsley, 

 at the Manchester Infirmary, twelve years 

 had intervened. — Quurlerhj Journal of Ag- 

 riculture. 



The Esculent Funguses of England. 



We believe there are very few persons 

 but will acknowledge the hand of Provi- 

 dence in our late visitation, and hence must 

 admit that, without His blessing on our la- 

 bours, all attempts to provide a substitute or 

 remedy for the failure of the potatoe crops 

 will avail us nothing. However, it is not 

 proper that we should remain idle; but ra- 

 ther that we should use every means at our 

 command to mitigate the scarcity with which, 

 for some good and wise purpose, we have 

 been so lately afflicted. 



To abandon, or even neglect, so invaluable 

 a crop as the potatoe, simply because tor the 

 last two or three years they have in many 

 parts of the country partially failed, would 

 be next to madness; for most certainly no 

 adequate substitute for that vegetable is 

 known, nor has any of the articles so recom- 

 mended — by the many advisers upon the 

 subject — the slightest pretensions to equality 

 as an article of food. We cannot, therefore, 

 urge too strongly upon every farmer, gar- 

 dener, and private gentleman, the necessity 

 and the importance of cultivating, year after 

 year, with especial care and perseverance, a 

 good breadth of potatoe, notwithstanding all 

 the discouragements with which it may be 

 attended; at the same time, however, we 

 would have no one unmmdful of any de- 

 scription of vegetable calculated to be useful 

 as an article of food; and, therefore, we hail 

 with pleasure every attempt to render avail- 

 able, as sustenance, subjects that hitherto 

 have been neglected or overlooked. 



The Esculent Fungi maybe mentioned as 

 of that class, for, most assuredly, they have 

 iiitherto been unheeded in this country, al- 

 though furnishing food to a very considerable 

 extent in various parts of the continent. The 

 volume beibre us come very opportunely; and 

 upon this matter we will let the author * 

 speak for himself: 



"No country is perhaps richer in esculent 

 t'unguses than our own; we have upwards 

 of thirty species abounding in our woods. 



