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Mushrooms  and  Fungi. 
(  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
\  December,  1896. 
Quite  recently,  the  accomplished  artist  and  author,  Mr.  Wm. 
Hamilton  Gibson,  has  brought  out  the  first  important  and,  by  far, 
the  most  sumptuous  American  book  upon  mushrooms  and  toadstools. 
It  describes  and  delineates  about  thirty  species,  edible  and  poison- 
ous. I  have  now  in  course  of  preparation  a  text-book  of  American 
species,  which  will  concisely  describe  most  of  them,  and  will  state, 
from  my  own  experience,  their  edible  or  non-edible  qualities. 
In  1 88 1,  an  accident — an  extensive  fire,  which  swept  a  vast  region 
among  the  mountains  of  West  Virginia  and  blackened  the  wooded 
sides — revealed  to  me,  as  I  rode  on  horseback  over  the  charred  mat, 
the  many  varieties  and  enormous  quantity  of  toadstools  everywhere 
studding  ground  and  tree.  They  were  so  clean,  so  beautiful,  so  lus- 
cious-looking, that  I  said  to  myself:  "There  must  be  varieties 
among  these  which  can  be  eaten.  Certainly  the  common  mush- 
room which  my  father  gathered  on  the  Springton  Meadows,  and  I 
helped  eat  with  boyish  gusto,  is  not  the  only  fungus  fit  for  food." 
The  first  instinct  of  an  old  soldier  kindled  the  shout :  "  Something 
to  eat,"  and  the  unvaried  bill  of  fare  at  the  native's  log  cabin 
where  I  lodged,  of  potatoes  and  bacon,  bacon  and  potatoes,  was 
lengthened  by  the  addition  of  anticipated  delicacies.  By  smell, 
taste  and  appetizing  scrunity,  I  selected  a  species  which,  in  every 
way,  invited  me  to  a  feast.  It  was  golden  yellow,  lily-shaped  but 
foliated,  white  in  flesh,  veined  on  the  outside,  and  seductive  in  the 
smell  of  ripe  apricots.  It  grew  in  fascinating  clusters,  where  beech 
trees  mottled  the  ground  with  shadow,  or  pin  oaks  allowed  warm 
share  of  sunlight.  Filling  my  saddle  pockets  I  took  them  home, 
cooked  a  mess,  ate  it,  and,  in  spite  of  the  prophecy  of  a  frightened 
family,  did  not  die.  The  species  eaten  was  the  Cantharellus  ci- 
barius,  a  modified  form  of  the  Agaricini,  a  gilled  family,  the  Eng- 
lish Free  Mason's  glory  at  St.  John's  Day  dinner — the  one  of  which 
the  old  botanist  Tratinick  says:  "  Not  only  this  same  fungus  never 
did  any  one  harm,  but  might  even  restore  the  dead."  It  grows  on 
the  margins  of  and  within  the  depths  of  almost  every  woods  in 
Pennsylvania. 
This  was  the  beginning.  By  careful  selection,  careful  testing, 
careful  eating,  I  added  fifteen  or  twenty  kinds  to  my  bill  of  fare,  by 
the  time  Mr.  Lloyd  P.  Smith,  then  Librarian  of  the  Philadelphia 
Library,  had  kindly  sent  to  me  Dr.  Badham's  illustrated  book  on 
English  fungi.    Upon  studying  it,  what  was  my  astonishment  to 
