iqo SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



various species figure in side-dishes in the restaurants — but the customs 

 of Soho are as alien as its inhabitants. 



I can find no evidence that fungi were ever eaten here so extensively 

 as in many parts of the Continent, where there are special markets, with 

 their own lists of edible fungi and their inspectors, some of whom have 

 made valuable contributions to mycological taxonomy. But the attitude 

 of a country may change in these matters. Berkeley wrote in 1857 that 

 ' the prejudice against Fungi is so great at Paris, that artificially raised 

 mushrooms are almost the only ones of the genus that are admitted into 

 the market, and in London the number is confined to about six.' Yet 

 in 1670 1 the French were apparently as fond of mushrooms as they are 

 to-day. In Sweden, where many species are sold in the markets, the 

 much esteemed Boletus edidis is called Karl Johannsvampen after Jean 

 Baptiste Bernadotte, Napoleon's Marshal who was chosen heir to the 

 Swedish throne. He assumed the name's Charles John, and afterwards 

 became Charles XIV ; he is said to have introduced fungus-eating to 

 his new country and cepe was his favourite. 



Fungi form the main food of the poorer classes in the Baltic States, 2 

 and in the vast tracts of marshy land in north-east Russia at certain times 

 of the year, and it will be remembered that Darwin records that, except 

 for a few berries, Cyttaria is the sole vegetable food of the natives of 

 Tierra del Fuego. 



There are suggestions in classical writings about methods of producing 

 edible fungi. One which was adopted and which has been carried on 

 until the present day is the watering of old stumps of poplar to stimulate 

 the growth of PhoJiota aegerita. Similarly watered, the mass of earth 

 compacted together with fungus mycelium — the fungus-stone, lapis 

 fungifer, coveted by Pepys, and which puzzled and interested Goethe — 

 produces the edible fruit-body of Polyporns tuberaster known since the 

 fourteenth century and mentioned by several of the herbalists ; its 

 classical locality is Italy, but it doubtless is the same as the Canadian 

 Tuckahoe (Grifola [Polyporus] Tuckahoe). The pseudo-sclerotium, with 

 its included tufa, soil or stones, is not itself edible, and thus differs from 

 the true sclerotia, composed entirely of fungal mycelium, of several 

 other species. Amongst these the best known are : Poria [Pachyma) 

 Cocos, the Tuckahoe or Indian Bread of America, which occurs associated 

 with the roots of pines and other trees apparently as a weak parasite — 

 it is probably the same as Pachyma hoelen, the Bukuryo of Japan and 

 Fuhling of China, used in oriental medicine for four thousand years, with 

 a primitive cultivation and an export as Chinese Root of over one thousand 

 tons annually ; Polyporus Mylittae, the Blackfellows' Bread of Australia, 

 and various tropical species of Lentinus, of which the first known was the 

 Tuber regium of Rumphius. 



The only larger fungi which are cultivated to any extent by man are 



1 ' I hoped milder physick might cure them of this French disease, of this 

 inordinate appetite to mushrooms.' — The Memoirs of Monsieur du Vail. 



2 Letts are often to be seen in Epping forest, where they gather large quantities 

 of almost every species and pickle them. French, Italians and Swiss met in the 

 woods of the home counties are usually making special search for species of 

 Boletus. 



