Am.  Jour.  Pharm.l 
December,  1896.  / 
Mushrooms  and  Fungi. 
though  a  toad  never  sat  upon  one,  unless  he  lit  there  at  the  end 
of  one  of  his  acrobatic  eccentricities. 
Nearly  all  of  these  books  are  of  foreign  origin — most  of  them 
English.  It  may  be  that  the  proverbial  care  of  an  Englishman 
for  his  stomach  has  something  to  do  with  the  fear  of  adding  to 
his  bill  of  fare  by  experimentation,  or  it  may  be  that  his  moral 
excellence  is  too  great  ;  for  I  invariably  find  that  the  better  a 
person  believes  himself  prepared  to  die,  the  more  afraid  he  is  to 
eat  toadstools. 
Be  this  as  it  may,  it  has  been  left  to  Americans  to  correct  the 
errors  of  foreign  authors,  and  to  largely  increase  the  list  of  edible 
toadstools.  More  than  this,  it  is  due  to  their  confirmation,  that 
the  poisonous  varieties  have  been  segregated  from  the  succulent, 
and  that  the  certain  antidote  to  the  deadly  alkaloid  which  exists 
in  a  few  of  a  limited  genus  has  been  named. 
The  interest  in  toadstools  as  a  useful  article  of  food  has  been 
steadily  increasing  in  this  country  for  about  thirty  years.  During 
the  War  of  the  Rebellion,  Dr.  Curtis,  of  North  Carolina,  tested  1 1 1 
varieties,  and  published  a  descriptive  list  of  them,  that  the  soldiers 
of  the  Confederacy  might  benefit  from  the  excellent,  healthy  food, 
ever  ready  at  their  feet,  wherever  post  was  established  or  a  camp- 
fire  lighted. 
Later,  Mr.  Julius  A.  Palmer,  of  Boston,  published  a  handsome 
colored  chart  of  "  The  Mushrooms  of  America,"  showing  about 
twenty  kinds.  Unfortunately,  this  chart  is,  in  many  respects, 
incorrect. 
Mr.  R.  K.  Macadam,  of  Boston,  has  devoted  ten  years  to  com- 
pleting a  correct  descriptive  and  comparative  list  of  over  2,000 
species /of  the  Hymenomycetes,  together  with  over  7,000  refer- 
ences, found  in  this  country — a  stupendous  work  accomplished 
quietly  by  a  methodical  business  man  for  the  love  of  science  alone. 
Dr.  Taylor,  Chief  of  the  Bureau  of  Microscopy,  Agricultural  De- 
partment United  States,  issued  five  pamphlets  upon  the  subject. 
The  object  was  good,  the  step  in  the  right  direction,  but  the  in- 
formation largely  retains  the  errors  of  the  books. 
Prof.  Charles  H.  Peck,  New  York  State  Botanist,  has  done  and  is 
doing  the  most  valuable  identifying  and  classifying  work  ever  done 
on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic.  His  labors  are  published  annually  in 
the  reports  of  the  New  York  State  Museum  of  Natural  History, 
