MISCELLANEOUS FOOD-PRODUCTS 111 



Fig. 117, II. — Bitter Cassava. A, flowering and fruiting branch. B, stam- 

 inate flower, cut vertically. C, pistillate flower, cut vertically. 

 D, fiiiit. E, F, G, seed, viewed from front, back, and side. H, starch 

 grains from the root, much magnified. (Pax, Martins, and Tschirch.) 



informed, that mushrooms are as nourishing a food as meat. 

 That this is an absurd exaggeration is seen from the fact that 

 a pound of mushrooms contains less than one-sixth as much 

 proteid as a pound of meat. Furthermore it has been ascer- 

 tained that while tlie proteid of meat is almost entirely diges- 

 tible, scarcely more than half of the proteid in mushrooms is 

 available as nutriment. Still, mushrooms are sufficiently nu- 

 tritious to warrrant our using them much more than we do, 

 especially certain wild forms which abound in our fields and 

 woods, and of which some at least are preferable even to the 

 cultivated species. The reason these wild forms are allowed 

 to go to waste, is chiefly that there grow along with them cer- 

 tain poisonous species so nearly .similar in appearance to the 

 edible sorts as to have led ignorant persons to gather and eat 

 them unwittingh', mth fatal result; for unlike tlie poison in 

 cassava root, that in poisonous mushrooms is not rendered 



