EDIBLE FUNGI. 155 



nation during the two days spent there,, I counted 

 eighteen species of edible fungi. Of the four or five 

 species which I collected there for the table, all who 

 partook of them, none of whom had before eaten mush- 

 rooms, most emphatically declared them delicious. On 

 my return homeward, while stopping for a few hours at 

 a station in Virginia, I gathered eight good species 

 within a few hundred yards of the depot. And so it 

 seems to be throughout the country. Hill and plain, 

 mountain and valley, woods, fields, and pastures, swarm 

 with a profusion of good, nutritious fungi, which are 

 allowed to decay where they spring up, because people 

 do not know how, or are afraid, to use them. By those 

 of us who know their use their value was appreciated, 

 as never before, during our late war, when other food, 

 especially meat, was scarce and dear. Then such persons 

 as I have heard express a preference for mushrooms over 

 meat had generally no need to lack grateful food, as it 

 was easily had for the gathering, and within easy distance 

 of their homes if living in the country. Such was not 

 always the case, however. I remember on one occasion 

 during the gloomy period, when, there had been a pro- 

 tracted drought, and fleshy fungi were to be found only 

 in damp, shaded woods, and but few even there, I was 

 unable to find enough of any one species for a meal ; so 

 gathering of every kind, I -brought home thirteen dif- 

 ferent kinds, had them all cooked together in one grand 



