The YOUHG HATtfRAMST: 



A Monthly Magazine of Natural History. 



Paut 94. OCTOBER, 1887. Vol. 8. 



A PLEA FOR FUNGI. 



By a Botanical Enthusiast. 



PERHAPS there are no class of vegetable productions that are viewed with 

 greater contempt and detestation than the Fungi or " toadstools/' 

 To the farmer or gardener it may be that various obnoxious weeds might 

 dispute the palm of opprobium, and excite his more active dislike, but by the 

 vast majority of the general public they are regarded with repulsive loathing. 

 Even the average botanist, who is supposed to love everything that springeth 

 from the ground, is yet repelled from the study of the obscure and fragile 

 fungi. Popular prejudice is so strong against the toadstool, that if any one 

 dares to hint that tons of valuable food, easily accessible to all, are annually 

 wasted, whilst millions of pounds of hardly-earned money are spent upon less 

 nutritious and more expensive articles of diet, one is looked upon as either a 

 fool or a fanatic, or perhaps both. And yet, notwithstanding the culinary 

 horror of all except the cultivated mushroom, it is a fact that more delicious 

 species than the ordinary edible mushroom abound in every part of our land, 

 waiting only to be known to be appreciated. But the aversion in the rural 

 mind, where the supplies are most abundant, is the most deeply rooted and 

 ineradicable. This present autumn, in the northern Scottish woods, I ob- 

 served immense quantities of the delicious Boletus edulis, of huge proportions, 

 nearly a foot in diameter, with a thickness of two or three inches, and sup- 

 ported on a stalk as thick as a man's wrist, sufficient for a good square meal. 

 Yet when I tried an elderly relative to cook one for me, she replied in the 

 broadest Doric, " ]N T a, na, laddie, Fll no pushon ye ! " and although I volun- 

 teered to prepare them myself and to take all the responsibility, she remained 

 obdurate, and my luscious morsel was consigned to the dunghill. This is 

 only a sample of the ignorant prejudice of the peasantry of both North and 

 South. But it is most marked in the north, for who ever saw a mushroom 

 cooked in a Scottish farmer's kitchen, ploughman's " bothy/ 7 or shepherd's 



