Journal and PRoCEEbiNos. iot 



t)f Toronto people, which unfortunately did not exist. These poor 

 people could have themselves subsisted on this bounty of nature, 

 but they too were afraid to touch them, though I daresay if they 

 had run across a deadly Amanita they would have eaten it without 

 hesitation, because it resembled the common meadow mushroom. 



We are told th^t on the Continent of Europe the people under- 

 stand the value of niushrooms much better. In many sections they 

 form one of the principal articles of diet to the peasants ; in fact 

 they dry and preserve for winter the summer's abundance. Many 

 of the Boletus family are thus dried, including, I believe, some that 

 are generally considered poisonous in this country, and are so rated 

 in our books. 



Badham states that in parts of Italy they had a Government 

 inspector of fungi at the market places, but the mushrooms that he 

 rejected were those in common use in England, while he passed as 

 being beyond suspicion many that are considered deadly in that 

 country. However this may be, it is certain that the prevailing ideas 

 on the subject of mushrooms would be very laughable if they were 

 not so vexatious. Many times, while gathering some particularly 

 attractive clump of the inky mushroom, I have been greeted by the 

 ubiquitous small boy with the remark : " Say, Mister, them's toad- 

 stools !" " I know it." "You ain't goin' to eat 'em, are you?" 

 " Yes." " They'll kill you, sure." 



Of all vegetable foods the fungi approach nearest to the animal 

 foods. As animals live on plants or other animals — that is, taking 

 already prepared organic tissues and reworking them for their own 

 use, or storing them up for future consumption — -so fungi use the 

 organic matter already prepared for them. Sometimes they get this 

 in the shape of rotten wood, or grass, or sometimes as manure. In 

 this respect they take the same place as animals in nature's economy, 

 and likewise the tissues of fungi are like the flesh of animals in the 

 amount of nitrogeneous matter they contain. Rollrausch & Siegel 

 (as quoted by Taylor) state the nitrogeneous values of different foods 

 as follows: Protein calculated for loo parts of bread, 8.03; of oat- 

 meal, 9.74; of barley bread, 6.39; of leguminous fruits, 27.05 ; of 

 potatoes, 4.85 ; of mushrooms, 33.0. 



From a scientific point of view this subject must be particularly 

 interesting. I know of no branch of natural science in which there 



