207 
ered the gills in the younger stages of growth. This veil is not 
present in all kinds of mushrooms. 
In the cultivation of the common mushroom, bricks of spawn 
are planted in suitable soil and the conditions of growth attended 
to with great care. Anyone wishing to grow mushrooms should 
provide himself with a good handbook on the subject, or learn 
the secret from a practical man in the business. It is not easy to 
do successfully unless done properly. 
“ Here’s a destroying angel with its head broke off,” shouted my 
small companion as we entered a beautiful oak grove in search of 
mushrooms. And, as we passed through, we found that several 
other “angels” had lost their heads, leaving the large “ death- 
cups’”’ almost hidden in the thin grass and leaf-mould where they 
grew. Evidently, this most poisonous of all mushrooms, the 
deadly amanita, had gone to grace somebody’s feast,—and a 
single specimen of it is sufficient to kill four or five persons ! 
I have frequently noticed a tendency in young or inexperienced 
persons to belittle the dangers of mushroom eating, apparently 
believing that a show of bravado or fearlessness will overcome the 
effects of the poisonous kinds, as though they belonged to the 
category of myths or ghosts. It is, indeed, true that many 
varieties have been called poisonous when they were not, just as 
most of our snakes have been under the ban on account of the 
mischief done by three or four; but there are a few mushrooms 
that contain poisons just as deadly as that of the rattlesnake or 
copperhead, and these are responsible for practically all of the 
eaths due to mushroom eating. These poisons are narcotic, 
rather than irritant, and their effects are slow to appear. 
If distress is experienced within four or five hours after eating 
mushrooms, it is a case of indigestion or minor poisoning and 
should readily yield to a prompt emetic. If, however, from eight 
to twelve hours have elapsed since eating the mushrooms, disa- 
greeable symptoms should be taken very pion since it is 
almost certain that one of the deadly poisons is at wo phy- 
sician should at once be called and the heart action crmulies by 
a hypodermic injection of about one sixtieth of a grain of atro- 
pine, which should be repeated twice at half-hour intervals. 
