2 EDIBLE MUSHROOMS 



But when we realize the fact — now generally con- 

 ceded — that most of the fatalities consequent upon 

 mushroom - eating are directly trace- 

 identification g^i^jg ^Q Qjjg particular tempting group 



fatal species of fungi, and that this group is more- 

 over so distinctly marked that a tyro 

 could learn to distinguish it, might not such a pop- 

 ular work, in its emphasis by careful portraiture and 

 pictorial analysis of this deadly genus — placarding 

 it so clearly and unmistakably as to make it readily 

 recognizable — might not such a work, to that extent 

 at least, accomplish a public service ? 



Moreover, even the most conservative mycologist 

 will certainly admit that out of the hundred and fifty 

 of our admittedly esculent species of 

 Conservative fungi there might be segregated a few 

 mycology which bear such conspicuous charac- 

 ters of outward form and other unique 

 individual features — such as color of spores, gills, 

 and tubes, taste, odor, surface character, color of 

 milky juice, etc. — as to render them easily recogniz- 

 able even by the " general reader." 



It is in the positive, affirmative assumption of these 

 premises that the present work is prepared, com- 

 prising as it does a selection of a score or more, as 

 it were, self-placarded esculent species of fungi, while 

 putting the reader safely on guard against the fatal 

 species and a few other more or less poisonous or 

 suspicious varieties which remote possibility might 

 confound with them. 



Since the publication of a recent magazine article 

 on this topic, and which became the basis of the pres- 



