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The Museum Gazette 



ON MUSHROOM EATING. 



The peculiar conditions of the summer which is now pass- 

 ing have not been favourable to the growth of mushrooms, 

 but their season is now come. The surface soil is well 

 warmed, and some continuous and genial showers are all 

 that is needed to cause the spawn to develop. The present 

 is therefore an appropriate season for discussion as to the 

 usefulness of fungi as food and the dangers which attend their 

 employment. In England, although a very large number of 

 fungi are regarded as edible by fungologists and many of them 

 highly eulogised, yet but very few have gained popular ac- 

 ceptance. It is otherwise on the Continent, and it singularly 

 happens that several which we carefully avoid are eaten 

 freely in France and Italy, whilst our favourite, the true 

 mushroom, is but lightly esteemed. Complaints are con- 

 stantly being repeated as to the British neglect of this kind of 

 food and loud accusations as to waste are made. That these 

 allegations are to a certain extent well founded may be true, 

 but at the same time it is quite possible that the supposed 

 advantages which might accrue from the more free use of 

 fungi as food are more than counterbalanced by real risks. 



In the first place, it is by no means established that fungal 

 growths regarded as food are in any special degree nutritious. 

 To assert that they are comparable to animal food is probably 

 a mistake, and it may be reasonably doubted whether, as re- 

 gards health and strength, the community really loses much 

 by their comparative neglect. That they are, many of them, 

 delicious, and add much to the gusto of a meal, no one ques- 

 tions, but this is a luxury, and one for which it is possible 

 to pay too dear. Two kinds of risk occur in connection with 

 the eating of fungi. One pertains to the eater, and the other 

 to the thing eaten. We recognise under the name of " idio- 

 syncrasy " individual peculiarities which can neither be known 



