‘MYCOLOGY IN ITS POPULAR ASPECT. 
Rev. WILLIAM FOWLER, M.A., 
Vicar of Liversedge, Yorkshire; Chaee of the Yorkshire Mycological Committee. “teh 
Wen I preach at home, 1 choose my own text, but my text = oe 
for to-day, here, has been chosen for me, and I must confess 
I hardly know what to make of it. The popular view of fungi, S 
so far as I have been able to make out, is that mushrooms are ee 
good for breakfast, and that all, or nearly all, other fungi are so ae 
Poisonous that they ought not to be even allowed to live. In | 
Lincolnshire the farm labourers, if they meet with a tuft of the fo 
Inky Coprinus (Coprinus Landen kick it up, lest their 
children should be poisoned by it, though it is, as many here 
know, not only quite harmless, but one of the most savoury ie 
Species we have. The Shaggy Coprinus (Coprinus comatus) ga 
and the Parasol Mushroom (Lepzota phaetee both of them oe 
Becsifeat meet with a similar fate. If on excursion I taste ay 
a small portion of a toadstool (for, inital, all are toadstools 
which are not mushrooms), those who are not mycologists look : 
as if they thought I was running a great risk of being poisoned, aa 
and are surprised, perhaps, to see me alive and well on the next 
€xcursion. Once when I had in a basket the Red Amanita 
(Amanita rubescens) and the delicious Lactarius (Lactarius 
deliciosus), 1 met a man who knew me, and who said, ‘ You're 
never going to eat them?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said I, ‘they will make 
a Capital supper.’ ‘Well,’ replied he, ‘before I had any, 
I should want to see you try first, and then I should want to 
wait a bit.’ This is ‘Mycology in its Popular Aspect,’ at any 
rate, in ome sense. ; 
But I think the framer of my text had nothing of this kind in 
his mind. He wished me, probably, to induce others to take up 
the study of fungi, by showing that it is neither as uninteresting — 
nor as difficult as it is often supposed to be, and thus making it 
more popular. No object in nature is uninteresting to those 
who inquire into it and learn all that can be known about it, and 
fungi have many sfecza/ points cf interest. The quickness of 
their growth; their curious forms; their strange properties 
(some of them being not only edible but nourishing, while others 
are very poisonous); their being unlike most other plants in 
_ this, that they are either parasites or saprophytes cranes their 
‘nourishment from other vegetables or animals, living or dead) ; 
ea camense number fehave $9,000) 5 : all these pues cers 
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