198 
f 
Early kinds are fit for use in eight or nine weeks. The cobs 
are gathered before they are too old, boiled and served with pep- 
per, salt and butter. Good eating kinds are Adams Early, Early 
Dwarf Sugar, Stowell’s Evergreen and Large Missouri. 
Another way of using maize is to germinate the ripe seed by 
laying it on a stone or cement floor, damping it with water and, 
covering it with a wet cloth. When the seed has germinated, 
the roots, etc., are broken off from the hard outer seed coat and 
boiled. This makes an excellent vegetable. 
The chief enemies of maize here are a caterpillar which attacks 
the young fruit, and the maize fungus Ustilago Maydis which 
grows on the cobs, destroying them and covering them with a 
sooty mass. This disease, so destructive in other parts of the 
world, is, however, comparatively rare here. 
Mushrooms. 
Although the English mushroom ( Agaricus campestris ) is a 
native of the Malay Peninsula, occurring in Singapore, Penang 
and Pahang, no one seems to have been successful in cultivating 
it here. It appears very irregularly in old grass-plots, sometimes 
in some quantity, and is as good in flavour as the English one. 
The Malays consider it unfit to eat, although they eat several 
other species of Agaricus , one of which, a white k nd, grows on 
rotten wood in the jungles. This is tasteless and tough when 
cooked, but it is very popular with them. 
A yellow ball-shaped fungus, Scleroderma aureum, Massee, 
growing commonly on paths in woods, is also said to be eatable, 
and to resemble truffles in flavour. An allied species is said to be 
eaten in Germany, 
