32 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 309. 



p. 412) how, by persistently and uniformly selecting year 

 after year with an exact and unvarying ideal in mind, 

 aiming constantly at precise shape, size, color, flavor 

 and texture, Mr. Roland Morrell at last secured a Melon 

 which exactly met the requirements of that region. A recent 

 bulletin of the Agricultural Experiment Station of New York, 

 at Geneva, records an attempt at the systematic breeding of 

 Strawberries, although nothing has yet been learned be- 

 yond the fact that one particular variety, Johnson's Late, 

 seems to be a desirable parent when an attempt is made to 

 breed late varieties of Strawberries, and that certain other 

 varieties gave a large proportion of excellent seedlings. 

 How little orderly work has been done in this direction 

 will be understood from the statement in this bulletin, that 

 of the hundreds of varieties of Strawberries that have been 

 introduced into cultivation the parentage of but very few 

 is known. The testing of any number of chance seedlings 

 will be of very little account, and will add nothing what- 

 ever to the sum total of our knowledge of horticultural 

 practice or natural law. If, however, some one good 

 variety is chosen, and selections from its seedlings is made 

 for twenty years in succession as carefully as those made 

 by Monsieur Vilmorin in France, or by Mr. Morrell in 

 Benton Harbor, we might reasonably expect some improve- 

 ment in the fruit. At all events, we should be accumu- 

 lating data from which to deduce some of the laws in ac- 

 cordance with which certain qualities in plants can be 

 modified and transmitted, so that we can breed plants to 

 a given standard, with greater assurance of success. 



Notes for Mushroom-eaters. — I. 



DURING the past summer an unusually large number 

 of cases of poisoning from eating fungi have been 

 noticed in the papers. If one may judge by their names, 

 a large proportion of the sufferers were foreigners, and it is 

 probably correct to infer that they were recent immigrants 

 from countries where fungi form a more important article 

 of food than in our country. A singular circumstance is 

 that in almost all parts of the north and west the past sum- 

 mer was unusually dry, in some places very dry, and there 

 have been comparatively few of the large, fleshy fungi 

 which are selected for food ; consequently one would have 

 supposed that the number of persons tempted to eat fungi 

 would have been smaller than usual. The comparative 

 scarcity of the species generally eaten may possibly have 

 led fungus-eaters to be less discriminating in the species 

 gathered and to attempt to supplement the scanty crop of 

 the species which they knew by experience or tradition to 

 be edible by other forms which they hoped might be 

 equally good. Since the species commonly recognized as 

 edible in the northern states are, in great part, identical 

 with the common edible species of Europe, it seems 

 strange that foreigners, who are supposed to recognize 

 without difficulty the edible forms in their native countries, 

 should have difficulty in distinguishing the same forms 

 here, for, in spite of the number of species of fungi indig- 

 enous to this country and not found in Europe, the recog- 

 nition of the traditional edible species is no more difficult, 

 and the number of poisonous species which might be mis- 

 taken for them is no greater here than there. 



Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the number of 

 persons poisoned by eating Toadstools, to use the common 

 name, is on the increase in this country, and the increase 

 is mainly due to the increasing number of ignorant foreign- 

 ers. As a rule, native Americans are not often fungus- 

 eaters, for, apart from their dread of being poisoned, fungi 

 are not to their taste, especially when submitted to the 

 treatment of the ordinary American cook. There is, how- 

 ever, a constantly increasing class of well-to-do Americans 

 who are beginning to make use of our native fungi for the 

 table, and they frequently ask for information as to the 

 means of distinguishing the edible from the poisonous 

 species. The present notes are an attempt to furnish to 

 that portion of the public represented by the readers of 



Garden and Forest information on the subject, which shall 

 be, as far as possible, free from technicalities familiar to 

 the expert botanist, although accurate as far as it goes. 

 The problem of enabling the uneducated masses to distin- 

 guish at sight our edible and prisonous forms is one which 

 is too difficult to be attempted at present. Even in coun- 

 tries like France, where for many years there have been 

 excellent popular works on the subject, the attempt to in- 

 struct the uncultivated classes has met with little success, 

 and it seems wiser to try first to give the necessary instruc- 

 tion to educated persons, trusting that in time they may 

 spread the information among the more ignorant, who, as 

 is well known, learn more quickly by word of mouth than 

 from books and tracts. 



The popular belief in this country is that the larger, 

 fleshy fungi may be divided practically into Mushrooms, 

 or edible species, and Toadstools, or poisonous species. 

 Hence the question is very often asked, How can one tell a 

 mushroom from a toadstool ? A botanist is at a loss how to 

 answer this question, since the assumption implied by the 

 question that there are two distinct classes, one good and 

 the other bad, is not at all correct. To speak more accu- 

 rately, a toadstool is any sort of a fleshy fungus shaped 

 more or less like an umbrella, that is, with a stalk and more 

 or less expanded top, no matter whether it is edible or 

 poisonous. The Mushroom of commerce, the one sold in 

 the market and cultivated in beds, is one particular species 

 of toadstool, Agaricus campestris, a species also found 

 growing wild. Although this is the only universally culti- 

 vated species in Europe and this country, a considerable 

 number of other species of Toadstools are known to be 

 edible, a much larger number are, as far as we know, not 

 poisonous, and a certain number are poisonous to some 

 extent, while a comparatively small number are actually 

 known to be highly poisonous. With fungi, as with other 

 articles of food, edibility is a comparative term.. Some 

 species, as Agaricus campestris and Coprinus comatus, 

 would be relished by most persons ; others would be liked 

 by persons having a natural fondness for fungi, but would 

 not be considered worth eating by others ; while a large 

 number of species are harmless, but so unpalatable or so 

 difficult of digestion that they would be rejected by all 

 except the very small class of those who may be called 

 fungus-cranks, who feel it their duty to like all fungi, ex- 

 cept those absolutely poisonous. 



To describe all our different forms large enough to be 

 noticed by those who are not special botanists, and tell 

 whether they are poisonous or not, would be quite out of 

 the question, for in any locality there are hundreds of them. 

 In fact, in the case of many of our species there is as yet 

 no scientific record of their edible properties. We know 

 only that some species are certainly edible, and that others 

 are certainly poisonous, but with regard to the rest we can 

 only infer from their botanical relations to the better-known 

 species that they are likely to be poisonous or otherwise. 

 The details can only be mastered by the few who make a 

 special study of the subject. Here we can only point out 

 definitely a few of the commonest of the best edible forms, 

 with hints as to the poisonous forms which might be con- 

 founded with them, and state a few rules which should be 

 learned by all who desire to collect fungi for food. The 

 rules are empirical, and there are exceptions to them, but 

 they have a certain practical value. There is nothing 

 novel about them, for they have been given over and over 

 again in books, until botanists wonder why they are not 

 more widely known. For the understanding of the rules 

 it is necessary, as a preliminary step, to call attention to 

 the general structure of the fungi known as toadstools. 



A toadstool is first recognized as a small, more or less 

 egg-shaped mass on the surface of the ground, trunks of 

 trees or other substrata. This stage is popularly called 

 the "button." The button, if the weather is favorable, 

 quickly shoots up into the full-grown toadstool. It is 

 often said that toadstools grow in a night. This is fre- 

 quently true, if by the expression " grows up " we mean 



