68 
CONFESSIONS OF A MYCOPHAGIST. 
scores of familiar forms scattered over the ground ; familiarity 
seems to breed contempt ; it is not the known, but the unknown, 
they are in search of, and the only service they seem to be to the 
general company is that of a court of appeal, a peripatetic store- 
house of Latin names, to be called upon whenever required, but 
alas too often incomprehensible and unsatisfactory to the inquiring 
spirit. The second class consists of what an old hand calls the 
“ pot-hunters,” those who look upon all fungi as divided into the 
edible and the useless, and whose ulterior object for the day is 
confined to the prospect of a mushroom breakfast for the following 
morning. The third class is made up of the ladies, who have 
joined the excursion because it is a novelty, or out of curiosity to 
discover what forays are like, or for some other reason concealed in 
the feminine breast ; and young men, whose chief occupation is to 
pick off the “burrs” and disentangle the briars from the dresses 
of the ladies, supplemented by the Society officials, and such of 
the Society members as make it a rule to patronize all excursions, 
irrespective of their object, for the sake of the Society. We may 
dispense with any further allusion to the third class, and the first 
class is competent to take care of itself, but the second class 
includes the most promising elements, and cannot be so summarily 
dismissed. It has been very much the custom for scientific fungus- 
hunters, that is, those who participate in fungus excursions for 
scientific purposes, to under-rate and depreciate those who disavow 
all scientific interest, and confine themselves to the utilitarian 
object of fungus eating. This is manifestly an error of judgment, 
since the ranks of the former are mostly recruited from those of 
the latter. Let an illustration suffice. Very many years ago it 
was my good fortune to be introduced to an East Anglian gentle- 
man who resided in. a small agricultural village not ten miles from 
Norwich. I had been invited to give a gossiping lecture to the 
rustics in the schoolroom, and was asked to take a preliminary tea 
with the squire. It soon became manifest that the hobby of my 
host was “ edible fungi,” a subject of which I was then profoundly 
ignorant, but I became greatly interested in the discovery that 
there were other fungi beside the mushroom which might be eaten, 
and I had the pleasure of looking over his portfolio of coloured 
drawings, and hearing his explanations and encomiums. This was 
my first inspiration to turn my attention to “ toadstools.” I had 
never seen them before, or at least with an appreciative eye, and 
the subject came upon me as a revelation. At first I did, as so 
many others have done, restricted my interest to their edible 
qualities, and had no ambition beyond being able to recognize, 
collect, and devour some half-dozen different kinds of “ toadstools,” 
which, in all my surroundings, I had been taught to regard as 
“ rank pi’sen.” Since that eventful evening I have never abandoned 
the pursuit, and it has been my solace for more than forty years. 
The first addition to my gastronomic list was a fortunate one, 
because it was a good one, but rather unfortunate, in another sense, 
