No. 409.] REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 6 
9 9 
prepare a monographic treatment of an entire group, provided one 
have the material and the literature at hand, than to make and describe 
a selection of interesting things from that group, since in the former 
case, barring errors of omission, provided the work be well done, 
whatever is sought is sure to be found, while in the other case inev- 
itable disappointment awaits the person hoping to learn about some- 
thing which the author did not consider it desirable or expedient to 
include. Doubtless Professor Atkinson’s book will so disappoint 
many people, and yet, for even the laboratory student of pileate 
fungi, it will prove of great value. On the other hand, Captain 
Mcllvaine's book, lacking the critical touch of the expert mycologist, 
though it contain the names of plants sought, will probably lead to 
a certain amount of error; yet it too is a book which should be 
found on the departmental shelves of every American institution in 
which mycology is taught. For the novice in fungus-eating, both, 
though helpful, are likely to prove confusing, since the distinctions 
made between species in the larger book may not prove easy to 
make with the fresh plants, in many cases, while the number treated 
in the smaller book, though restricted, is sufficiently great to embar- 
rass ordinary people by tempting them into difficult paths; and no 
book of a scope greater than that of Mr. Gibson's, in which only 
thirty edible species are included, is likely to supplant it for the 
amateur American mycophagist. The present books, like Gibson's, 
contain numerous recipes for preparing and cooking edible species, 
and, for the most part, these promise easily made and palatable 
luxuries where fungi can be obtained in the fresh state. 
Perhaps, in view of the uncertainties attending the use of fungi 
as food, it may be as well to state that in addition to the avoidance 
of amanitas, even including the wholesome ones for the sake of 
greater safety, all species unpleasant to the taste or acrid, all 
Boletuses, and all specimens which show the slightest trace of 
discoloration or which have been allowed to become in the least 
stale, should be left to the person who proposes to derive sufficient 
pleasure from dangerous experimentation to justify in his own mind 
the tampering with unnecessary and sometimes great risks. Pro- 
fessor Atkinson, in speaking of the unwholesome species, quotes from 
chemists in a way to show that in addition to muscarine, the deadly 
alkaloid of Amanita muscaria, and phallin, the more deadly toxalbumin 
of Amanita phalloides and A. verna, choline, an alkaloid which in 
decomposition gives rise to muscarine or a related alkaloid more 
deadly than itself, and helvellic acid, likewise a most energetic 
