SEPTEMBER 229 



chairman to explain his views upon the general question, 

 he cast a deliberate glance round the committee, and 

 cleared the ground by the following indisputable state- 

 ment 



' My lords and gentlemen : it 's a weel kent fac', in oor 

 country, that whaur there's nae water there can be nae 

 fush.' 



So my friend could point triumphantly to the 'fac',' 

 that where there were no salmon there could be no salmon 

 disease. 



LIU 



Among the characteristics of the remarkable summer 

 (1905) now drawing to a close must be MUSH. 

 noted the extraordinary abundance of mush- rooms 

 rooms, the most capricious of crops. Morning after 

 morning, lawns and pastures in all parts of the country 

 are freshly studded with gleaming hemispheres, covered 

 with material like white kid, which screens the delicate 

 rosy gills from sun and dew. The English name ' mush- 

 room ' has been appropriated exclusively to the delicious 

 Agaricus campestris, and to its near relative A. arrensis, 

 known as the horse mushroom, quite as excellent in a 

 young state as the other. But whereas both these species 

 only grow in sound land and sweet pasture, the name is 

 far from appropriate to them, being a corruption of the 

 Old French mouscheron, mousseron, from mousse, moss, 

 signifying toadstools in general. In Middle English the 

 term was muscheron, glossed in the Promptorium Par- 

 vulorum, a vocabulary published in 1440, as 'toodys 

 (toad's) hatte, boletus, fungus' The field mushroom does 

 not like moss. 



