24 JOURNAL OF THE 



" I have several times been asked by persons eating mushrooms for the first 

 time, whether these things belong to the vegetable or animal kingdom. There is 

 certainly a veiy noticeable resemblance in the flavor of some of them to that of 

 flesh, fish, or mollusc, so that the question, as founded merely on taste, is not an 

 unnatural one. But I was much struck with the propriet ywhen reading an article 

 in " Eraser's Magazine " a few years since, written by the late Mr. Broderip, 

 who therein says that mushrooms contain osmazome. If this be so, it accounts 

 both for their flavor and for their value as food. Of this latter quality I had 

 become so well convinced that, during our late war I sometimes averred, and I 

 doubt if there was much, if any, exaggeration in the assertion, that in some 

 parts of the country I could maintain a regiment of soldiers five months of the 

 year upon mushrooms alone. 



" This leads to a remark which should not be overlooked, upon the great 

 abundance of eatable mushrooms in the United States. I think it is Dr. Bad- 

 ham who boasts of their unusual number in Great Britain, staling that there are 

 30 edible species in that kingdom. I cannot help thinking that this is an under 

 estimate. But if the doctor is correct, there is no comparison between the 

 number in your country and this. I have collected and eaten 40 species found 

 within two miles of my house. There are some others within this limit which 

 I have not yet eaten. In the catalogue of the plants of North Carolina, you 

 will notice that I have indicated one hundred and eleven species of edible fungi 

 known to inhabit this State. I have no doubt there are 40* or 50 more, as the 

 alpine portion of the State, which is very extensive and varied, has been very 

 little explored in search of fungi. 



" In October, 1866, while on the Cumberland mountains in Tennessee, a 

 plateau less than 1,000 feet above the valleys below, although with little leisure 

 for examination 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 mushrooms, declared 

 them most emphatically 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 protracted drought, and fleshy fungi were to be 

 found only in damp shaded woods, and but few were there, I was unable to 

 find enough of any one species for a meal ; so gathering of every kind, I brought 

 home 13 different kinds, had them all cooked together in one grdiud. pot pourri. 



