MUSHROOMS AND THEIR USE. 
I. anp I. INTRODUCTION—GENERAL STATEMENTS. 
Many articles on mushrooms have recently appeared in peri- 
odicals in this country, from which it is evident that there is a 
desire on the part of many persons to obtain information con- 
cerning them. It has, therefore, seemed good to me to tell what 
little I know about the subject, even at the risk of taking up 
what may appear to some a matter already well discussed. I am 
the more strongly inclined to do this because of numerous pri- 
vate appeals to me for information of this character, and because 
no single periodical can hope to reach all the people in this vast 
country who desire information on such an interesting topic. 
Besides, no single writer is likely to exhaust the subject, or to 
tell all that should be known concerning it; what one may omit 
another may express, and in this way general knowledge may 
be increased. 
The times seem auspicious for such an undertaking, for with 
much depression in financial and business circles, with lack of 
employment and the reduction in wages now taking place, any- 
thing that promises to cheapen the cost of living or add to the 
means of subsistence of the unemployed or of those employed on 
short time or at low wages, must possess a peculiar interest. 
“Hard times” may now and then compel us to look into Nature’s 
bountiful storehouse for a supplementary supply of food. And 
Nature, almost always lavish in her gifts, has indeed provided a 
bountiful supply, which in this country has been greatly over- 
looked and almost entirely neglected until very recent years. 
Mushrooms have been, and still are, much more largely con- 
sumed in Europe than inthis country. In China also, where, 
with her teeming population, the cost of living seems to be re- 
duced almost to its minimum, they are extensively used. China 
itself does not supply its own demand for them, and therefore 
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