mushrooms, edible axd poisonoxs. 169 



Mushrooms, Edible and Poisonous. 



By William C. Bates, Vice-President of the Boston Mycological Club, Boston. 



The Massachusetts Horticultunil Society has uow for many 

 years devoted its resources and expert knowledge to the develop- 

 ment in this community of a higher intelligence in regard to the 

 growth, propagation, utility, and beauty of all forms of vegetable 

 life — vegetable in its widest sense, including fruit, flower, and 

 plant, and all the products of the vegetable kingdom. The time, 

 intellect, and money of the Society have been devoted to these ends, 

 that the life of man may have a wider, fuller, freer existence, and 

 that his spiritual sense may be quickened by the revelation of the 

 beneficent bounty of the all-mother Nature, and that the stress of 

 man's daily wants may be somewhat lightened by the increased 

 yield in quality and quantity of Nature's products. 



It seems eminently proper, in view of this chosen work of the 

 Society, that we should spend the hour in consideration of one 

 form of vegetable life. Native Fungi, which, it is claimed, has 

 within its own field great possibilities of beneficence in its adapta- 

 bility as nourishing food for man. It has been well said that " he 

 who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before " is a 

 benefactor of the race ; it follows, then, that the revelation to the 

 people of this country that tons upon tons of nutritious diet are 

 spontaneously produced by nature and await each year man's con- 

 sumption, is the duty of the mycologist and of every one who loves 

 his fellow men. 



We will consider the subject, Mushrooms, Edible and Poisonous, 

 almost entirely from an economic point of view — that is, in rela- 

 tion to their value as a food product and in regard to their varieties 

 and abundance in all parts of our country. Botanists have, for 

 about a hundred years, been engaged in analyzing and classifying 

 the fungi until upwards of one thousand species have been ticketed 

 and labeled with scientific names, but it is only within fifty years 

 that much attention has been paid to the esculent qualities of 

 mushrooms, and much progress has been made in very recent 

 years. Indeed, a dozen years ago there were probably not a 

 score of mycophagists in England and America, — that is, persons 

 who knew by their own experience the value of several species of 

 mushrooms for food — eaters of mushrooms. 



Mushrooms have been eaten since the earliest times, especially 



