12 BRITISH EDIBLE FUNGI. 



kinds which remain hard after cooking are injurious, 

 while those which admit of being thoroughly well 

 cooked, when eaten with saltpetre are harmless ; they 

 are rendered more safe still if they are cooked with 

 meat, or with pear stalks ; indeed, it is good to eat 

 pears immediately after fungi. Vinegar being 

 contrary to them neutralizes their dangerous qualities. 

 All these products appear after showers." Our 

 purpose being served, by these quotations, to show 

 that edible fungi were known to the ancients, we 

 leave the rest of Mr Houghton's excellent chapter 

 untouched. 



Without waiting to demenstrate that in more 

 recent times they are consumed throughout Europe 

 to a far greater extent than in the British Isles, from 

 Russia and Kamtchatka to Austria and Italy, in 

 Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and in 

 Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, we follow the 

 practice to the United States of North America, 

 where kinds are eaten, according to Dr Curtis, to 

 which we take exception. He enumerates altogether 

 one hundred and thirty excellent species. During 

 the latter part of the great civil war, the people of the 

 Southern States, being much pressed for food, found 

 fungi of very great importance to them. In the 

 Rocky Mountains other species come in for consump- 

 tion. Finishing first with the Northern Hemisphere, 

 we find fungus eating on the slopes of the Himalayas ; 

 dried morels sold for food in the bazaars of North 



