MUSHROOMS. 295 



















certainly a pleasant morsel. The Rev. Dr. M. A. Curtis, in 
his Catalogue of the Plants of the State of North Carolina 
(Geological Report), 1867, gives 438 species of Agaries, 
of which he considers fifty-six as esculent. In Poland and 
Russia even such abstemiousness is unknown, and most kinds 
of the larger fungi that occur are employed for food by the 
common people, either in a dried state, or after pickling in 
salt or vinegar. That there are highly. poisonous qualities 
resident in several is indisputable, and is well known, as has 
been shown by Christison and others; one being an acrid 
matter so very fugacious that it disappears when the plant 
is dried or boiled or macerated in weak acids, alkalies, or 
aleohol; the other principle is more fixed, resisting the 
action of these tests, and resembling in its effects the opera- 
tion of opium. 
Many years ago, Greville, in a Memoir before the Wer- 
nerian Society of Edinburgh, directed the public attention to 
the use of the esculent fungi as a staple article of diet; and 
Schwaegrichen, the illustrious editor of Schweinitz’s first con- 
