THE MEADOW MUSHROOM. 33 



as the common mushroom, that we cannot help feeling 

 surprise that anyone, with an ordinary amount of 

 common -sense, should confound them with anything 

 else. There is no other species found at the same 

 season of the year and in the same localities with 

 which it could be confused. In most cases of fungus 

 poisoning which have come under notice there must 

 have been recklessness or profound ignorance, for the 

 fungi eaten, wherever identified, bear no resemblance 

 to the common or the meadow mushroom. A cartoon 

 was issued in one of the public journals a few years 

 ago, in which a buxom damsel was represented as 

 returning from collecting fungi, and meeting the 

 Squire, who was in the act of cautioning her as to the 

 result of her proceedings. " You can't be too parti- 

 cular — dangerous things, mushrooms." To which the 

 damsel replies, " It doesn't much matter ; they're only 

 for my mother-in-law." Cautions are proverbially 

 useless now as well as in older times, when every 

 little wood or coppice was adorned with a notice- 

 board, on which was written, " Man-traps and spring- 

 guns set here." 



There is a large variety (called villaticus) of the 

 meadow mushroom, which also attains ten or twelve 

 inches in diameter, and is quite as good an article of 

 food, but unfortunately it is rare. The principal 

 difference resides in the surface of the cap or pileus, 

 which is much darker, and broken up into a great 

 number of flat scales ; these are darker still, and lie 



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