THE PRINCIPLES OF BOTANY. 
9G1 
recommended to the palates of his countrymen in a time of 
threatened famine : and in resrard to those of our own country 
he has the following remarks : 
^^No country. is_, perhaps^ richer in esculent funguses than 
our own; we have upwards of thirty species abounding in 
our woods. No markets mighty therefore^ be better supplied 
than the English, and yet England is the only country in 
Europe where this important and savoury food is, from igno¬ 
rance or prejudice, left to perish ungathered. 
“ In France, Germany, and Italy, funguses not only con¬ 
stitute, for weeks together, the sole diet of thousands, but the 
residue, either fresh, dried, or variously preserved in oil, 
vinegar, or brine, is sold by the poor, and forms a valuable 
source of income to many who have no other produce to 
bring into the market and yet he feelingly states—I have 
this autumn myself witnessed (1847) whole hundredweights 
of rich, wholesome diet rotting under trees; woods teeming 
with food, and not one hand to gather it’’ 
Such are the remarks of a man of scientific and medical 
education, who had studied the fungus market in Italy and 
other European countries, and from which he was led to con¬ 
clude that in Rome alone the poor derived as much as <£4000 
per annum from the sale of funguses. 
But, as regards ourselves, he might have gone further than 
to lament over mere neglect, as we have too often seen people 
busily employed in crushing and destroying what they them¬ 
selves could not appreciate. 
The genus Agaricus, which stands at the head of our table, 
and to which mushrooms, though not all esculent funguses, 
belong, may be thus defined. 
Hymenium, consisting of plates radiating from a common 
centre, with shorter ones in the interstices, composed of 
a double closely connected membrane (gills), more or less 
distinct from ihepileus (cap); volva, or veil, various or absent; 
named from Agaria, a region of Sarmatia. 
The parts here described are those which appear elevated 
on a stipe, or stem, which springs from a floccose cellular 
matter, often found in the soil, and investing the roots of 
grasses, upon the decaying elements of which so many of the 
species exist. Many of the species occur in woods, upon the 
decaying stumps of trees, on decaying manure, and in the 
meadows; and we would here direct attention to the latter, 
as some of the species are attractive to the botanist and man 
of science, from the infiuence they seem to exert on the 
pasture, and, besides, many of these are capable of affording 
food luxuries of the most grateful kind. 
