180 PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
Mushrooms.” Why they should have been connected with 
toads has never been explained, but it was always so— 
“The grieslie Todestoole growne there mought I see, 
And loathed paddocks lording on the same.”— Spenser. 
They were associated with other loathsome objects besides 
toads, for “Poisonous Mushrooms groweth where old rusty 
iron lieth, or rotten clouts, or neere to serpent’s dens or rootes 
of trees that bring forth venomous fruit. 1 . . . Few of them 
are good to be eaten, and most of them do suffocate and 
strangle the eater. Therefore, I give my advice unto those 
that love such strange and new-fangled meates to beware of 
licking honey among thornes, lest the sweetnesse of one do 
not counteracte the sharpnesse and pricking of the other.” 
This was Gerard’s prudent advice on the eating of “ Mushrumes 
and Toadstooles,” but now-a-days we know better. The fung- 
ologists tell us that those who refuse to eat any fungus but 
the Mushroom (Agaricus campestris) are not only foolish in 
rejecting most delicate luxuries, but also very wrong in wasting 
most excellent and nutritious food. Fungologists are great 
enthusiasts, and it may be well to take their prescription cum 
grano salts; but we may qualify Gerard’s advice by the well- 
known enthusiastic description of Dr. Badham, who certainly 
knew much more of fungology than Gerard, and did not 
recommend to others what he had not personally tried himself. 
After praising the beauty of an English autumn, even in com¬ 
parison with Italy, he thus concludes his pleasant and useful 
book, “The Esculent Funguses of England”: “I have myself 
witnessed whole hundredweights of rich, wholesome diet rotting 
under trees, woods teeming with food, and not one hand to 
gather it. ... I have, indeed, grieved when I reflected on 
the straitened conditions of the lower orders to see pounds 
innumerable of extempore beefsteaks growing on our Oaks in 
the shape of Fistula hepatic a ; Ag. fusipes , to pickle in clusters 
under them; Puffballs , which some of our friends have not 
inaptly compared to sweet-bread for the rich delicacy of their 
1 Herrick calls them “brownest Toadstones.” 
