Part 11

_Bot. Char_. “Margin of the pileus sulcate, gills white, stuffed with cottony pith, fistulose, attenuated upwards, almost smooth; volva like a sheath. Woods and pastures, August and October; not uncommon. _Pileus_ four inches or more broad, plane, slightly depressed in the centre, scarcely umbonate, fleshy, but not at the extreme margin, which is elegantly grooved in consequence, viscid when moist, beautifully glossy when dry; epidermis easily detached, more or less studded with brown scales, the remnants of the volva, not persistent; _gills_ free, ventricose, broadest in front, often imbricated, white; _sporules_ white, round; _stem_ six inches or more high, from half to an inch thick, attenuated upwards, obtuse at the base, furnished with a volva, this adnate below to the extent of an inch, with the base of the stem, closely surrounding it above as in a sheath, but with the margin sometimes expanded; within and at the base marked with the groovings of the pileus, brittle, sericeo-squamulose, scarcely fibrillose, but splitting with ease longitudinally, hollow, or rather stuffed with fine cottony fibres; the very base solid, not acrid, insipid. _Smell_ scarcely any. It occurs of various colours, the more general one is a mouse-grey” (_Berkeley_).

The perfect accuracy of the above description will strike every one familiar with this species. Vittadini speaks of it as a solitary fungus, but I have found it on more than one occasion in rings. Its flesh, being very delicate and tender, must not be over-dressed. When properly fried in butter or oil, and as soon after gathering as possible, the _Ag. vaginatus_ will be found inferior to but few Agarics in its flavour.

AGARICUS VIOLACEUS, _Linn._

Subgenus 18. INOLOMA.

_Bot. Char._ _Pileus_ from four to six inches broad, obtuse, expanded, covered with soft hairs, colour deep violet; _stem_ spongy, grey, tinged with violet, minutely downy, about four inches high; _veil_ fugacious, composed of fine threads; _gills_ deep violet when young, but turning tawny in age; _flesh_ thick, juicy.

This is a handsome fungus, not very common, but plentiful where it occurs; it grows in woods, particularly under Pine and Fir trees, and may be dressed either with a white or a brown sauce.

AGARICUS CASTANEUS, _Bull._

Subgenus 19. DERMOCYBE.

_Bot. Char._ _Pileus_ slightly fleshy, convex when young, at length umbonate, chestnut colour, from one to three inches broad, glabrous; _gills_ rather broad, easily detached from the stem, ventricose, changing from light-purple to a ferruginous hue; _stem_ rather thin, from one and a half to three inches long, hollow, silvery, light-lilac or white; _veil_ delicate, composed of floccose threads; in _taste_, when raw, it somewhat resembles the _Ag. oreades_, but it has no smell.

This _Agaric_ may be distinguished from others by its chestnut or bistre colour; it is probably not uncommon; growing all the summer and autumn in woods, and under trees in meadows. Mr. Berkeley reports it esculent; I have no experience of it.

AGARICUS PIPERATUS, _Scop._

Subgenus 7. GALORRHEUS.

“Ed è veramente commestibile e saporoso quando se ne levi il latte.”—_Bendiscioli._

_Bot. Char._ “_Pileus_ infundibuliform, rigid, smooth, white; gills very narrow, close; milk, and the solid blunt stem, white. In woods, July and August. _Pileus_ 3-7 inches broad, slightly rugulose, quite smooth, white, a little clouded with umber, or stained with yellow where scratched or bruised, convex, more or less depressed, often quite infundibuliform, more or less waved, fleshy, thick, firm but brittle; margin involute at first, sometimes excentric, milk-white, hot. _Gills_ generally very narrow (1/20 of an inch broad), but sometimes much broader, cream-colour, repeatedly dichotomous, very close, ‘like the teeth of an ivory comb,’ decurrent from the shape of the pileus, when bruised changing to umber. _Stem_ 1-3 inches high, 1½-2 inches thick, often compressed, minutely pruinose, solid, but spongy within, the substance breaking up into transverse cavities.”[194]

Though very acrid when raw, it loses its bad qualities entirely by cooking, and is extensively used on the Continent, prepared in various ways. It is preserved for winter use by drying or pickling in a mixture of salt and vinegar (_Berkeley_).

I have frequently eaten this fungus at Lucca, where it is very abundant, but as it resembles the _Ag. vellereus_ in appearance, with the properties of which we are unacquainted, too much caution cannot be exercised in learning to discriminate it from this and neighbouring species.

AGARICUS VIRGINEUS, _Wullf._

Subgenus 8. CLITOCYBE. Subdivision CAMAROPHYLLI.

_White Field-Agaric._

_Bot. Char._ _Pileus_ from one to two inches broad, margin involute when young, then expanded, depressed in the centre. _Gills_ deep, connected with veins, sometimes forked, broadly adnate, but breaking away from the stem as the pileus becomes depressed. _Stem_ six lines broad at the top, tapering downwards, not more than two at the base; at first stuffed with fibres, then hollow, excentric; the whole plant white, with occasionally a tinge of pink. _Taste_ pleasant, odour disagreeable.

These graceful little Agarics grow in pastures, and are extremely common in the autumn. They are so small that it requires a great many of them to make a dish, but as they occur frequently in the same fields with puff-balls, and may be dressed in the same manner, it is not unusual when the supply is scarce to serve them together, with the same sauce. The flavour of _Ag. virgineus_ is not unlike that of _Ag. oreades_.

TUBER ÆSTIVUM, _Vitt._

PLATE VIII. FIG. 2.

Peridium warty, of a blackish-brown colour, the warts polygonal and striate, flesh traversed by numerous veins; asci 4-6-spored; spores elliptical, reticulated.

This plant, the common truffle of our markets, is abundant in Wiltshire and some other parts of England, and probably occurs in many places where it escapes observation, from its subterranean habit.

CONCLUSION.

Italy is not the country for the English florist; he will find twenty times as many petals at home. Trim parterres are not inventions of the South; summer-houses would be no luxuries in a climate that never knows winter; the only Conservatories that flourish there are not for flowers, but for music. In few northern regions is Flora worse off for a bouquet than at Rome or Naples; regarded merely as the herald of Spring and not appreciated for her own sake, as soon as she has waved her wand over the land and covered it with the March blossoms of Crocuses, Cyclamens, and Anemones, her reign is over. All scents are held in equal abhorrence save those of frankincense and garlic, for which there seems to be a prescriptive toleration; but every other odour, fetid or fragrant, musk[195] or mignonette, is equally proscribed; and an Italian Signora would as soon permit a Locusta to cook for her, as a violet to scent her boudoir. To pick wild flowers is as dangerous as it is difficult to find cultivated ones; a _coup de soleil_ or a fever is easily procured by imprudent exposure before sunset, while the interval between that and night is too brief to be employed for the purpose; but when the season for flowers is long past, and Autumn with her fruits is come round again, when the stranger can wander forth where he lists without an umbrella, he will be able to luxuriate amidst the lovely scenery, and to delight himself in the natural history of the district: the season of the periodical rains has ceased; the repose of the forest is no longer troubled by the Power of the waters; the mountain Pines borne for miles down into the valleys are stranded on the broad shingly bed of the exhausted torrent; broken bridges are safely repaired; the maize is receiving the last mellowing touches as it festoons the cottage fronts, the prickly chestnut-pods are beginning to gape and the brown chestnuts to leap out shining from their envelopes; the last reluctant olive has been beaten from the bough; the vintage has nearly ceased to bleed; night fires[196] already begin to nicker on the mountains, and the hemp stubble is daily crackling on the plain. This is indeed the time for enjoying Italy; nature has revived again, and with nature, man. The feverish torpor, I had almost ventured to call it the summer hybernation, has ceased with September, and Autumn has come round with the vivifying influence of a new Spring; then if we go abroad to wander, whether our walk be across plains or through upland woods, we shall not stroll a mile without stopping a hundred times to admire what is to many of us a nearly new class of objects which have sprung up suddenly and now beset our path on every side. These are the Fungus tribe, which are as beautiful as the fairest flowers, and more useful than most fruits; and now that butchers’ meat is bad, that the beans have become stringy, and the potatoes are hydrated by the rain, they appear thus opportunely to eke out the scantiness of autumnal larders in the South and give a fresh zest to the daily repast. Well may their sudden apparition surprise us, for not ten days since the waters were all out, and only three or four nights back peals of thunder rattled against the casements and kept the most determined sleepers in awful vigil; and now—behold the meadows by natural magic studded with countless fairy-rings of every diameter, formed of such species as grow upon the ground, while the Chestnut and the Oak are teeming with a new class of fruits that had no previous blossoming, many of which have already attained their full growth. We recollect with gratitude the objects of a pursuit, which has accidentally brought us to such an acquaintance with the diversities of Italian scenery as we never should have experienced without it. In fishing, it is not the fish we catch, which alone repays us for our toil; it is the wandering as the rivulet wanders, “at its own sweet will,” the exercise and the appetite consequent upon it, the prize in natural history, the reciting aloud, or reflecting as we walk, and when it is pleasantly warm the “molles sub arbore somni,” which console us for the lack of sport. On the same principle, mushroom-hunting may be recommended to the young naturalist not only for the beauty of the objects which he is sure to come upon (if he do but hunt at the right season), but also because in that most beautiful of months, whether at home or abroad, it brings the wanderer out of beaten paths to fall in with many striking views which he would not otherwise have explored. The extremely limited time during which funguses are to be found, their fragility, their infinite diversity, their ephemeral existence, these, too, add to the interest of an autumnal walk in quest of them. At Lucca, leaving idleness and indigestion in bed, just as the sun was beginning to shoot his first rays on the white convents and the spires of the village churches on the mountains, making morning above, while the deep valley beneath was still in twilight, it was pleasant to pass the little opening coffee-house with its two or three candidates for early breakfast, and crossing the noiseless trout-stream over the little bridge, to enter one of those old chestnut-forests and begin clambering up the laddery pathway, to reach the summit just as he poured his full effulgence on the magnificent rival of the Lucchese and Modenese territories. Pleasant, too, was it on the road Romeward, pausing a few days to enjoy the exquisite scenery about Spoleto, to climb the steep streets to the cathedral, and thence, passing the giddy viaduct several hundred feet above the white ravine which it traverses, to issue upon those Nursian Hills then fragrant with the breath of morning, “le beau matin qui sort humide et pâle,” and with the scent of sweet herbs; but above all other hills renowned for the fragrance of those ever-reproductive mines of coal-black subterranean truffles! It is a pleasant remembrance to have plucked the crimson Amanite, that ministered to a Cæsar’s decease, in the very neighbourhood of the Palatine Hill; to have collected mushrooms amidst the meadows of Horace’s farm, where he tells us they grew best; and to have watched along the moist pastures of the Cremera a stand of the stately _Ag. procerus_ nodding upon their stalks; or, standing on the heights above Sorrento, just as the setting sun flashed upon the waters of the bay ere they engulfed him, and left us to his sister the evening star, to have come upon that wonderful _Polyporus tuberaster_ whose matrix is the hard stone, from which it derives strength and luxuriance as if from a soft and genial soil.

But not only in Italy, in our own country also, the Collector in Mycology will have to traverse much beautiful and diversified scenery; amid woods, greenswards, winding lanes, rich meadows, healthy commons, open downs, the nodding hop-grove and the mountain sheep-path; and all shone upon by an autumnal sunset,—as compared with Southern climes “obscurely bright,” and unpreceded by that beautiful rosy tint which bathes the whole landscape in Italy, but with a far finer background of clouds to reflect its departed glories: and throughout all this range of scenery he will never hunt in vain; indulgent gamekeepers, made aware of what he is poaching, may warn him that he is not collecting mushrooms, but will never warn him off from the best-kept preserves. In such rambles he will see, what I have this autumn (1847) myself witnessed, whole _hundredweights of rich wholesome diet rotting under the trees; woods teeming with food and not one hand to gather it_; and this, perhaps, in the midst of potato blight, poverty and all manner of privations, and public prayers against imminent famine. I have indeed grieved, when I reflected on the straitened condition of the lower orders this year, to see pounds innumerable of extempore beef-steaks growing on our oaks in the shape of _Fistulina hepatica_; _Ag. fusipes_ to pickle, in clusters under them; Puff-balls, which some of our friends have not inaptly compared to sweet-bread for the rich delicacy of their unassisted flavour; _Hydna_ as good as oysters, which they somewhat resemble in taste; _Agaricus deliciosus_, reminding us of tender lamb-kidneys; the beautiful yellow Chantarelle, that _kalon kagathon_ of diet, growing by the bushel, and no basket but our own to pick up a few specimens in our way; the sweet nutty-flavoured _Boletus_, in vain calling himself _edulis_ where there was none to believe him; the dainty _Orcella_; the _Ag. heterophyllus_, which tastes like the craw-fish when grilled; the _Ag. ruber_ and _Ag. virescens_, to cook in any way, and equally good in all;—these were among the most conspicuous of the _trouvailles_. But that the reader may know all he is likely to find in one single autumn, let him glance at the catalogue below.[197] He may at first alarm his friends’ cooks, but their fears will, I promise him, soon be appeased, after one or two trials of this new class of viands, and he will not long pass either for a conjuror or something worse, in giving directions to stew _toadstools_. As soon as he is initiated in this class of dainties, he will, I am persuaded, lose no time in making the discovery known to the poor of the neighbourhood; while in so doing he will render an important service to the country at large, by instructing the indigent and ignorant in the choice of an ample, wholesome, and excellent article, which they may convert into money, or consume at their own tables, when properly prepared, throughout the winter.

NOTE ON THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE SPORES IN HYMENOMYCETOUS FUNGUSES.

On the authority of Link, Fries, Vittadini, and other Continental mycologists, I have, in speaking of the spores of the genera _Agaricus_, _Boletus_, _Cantharellus_, _Hydnum_, and _Clavaria_, represented them as enclosed in cases (thecæ or sporanges). But from an interesting memoir, published by Mr. Berkeley in the ‘Annals of Natural History,’ “On the Fructification of the Pileate and Clavate tribes of Hymenomycetous Fungi,” which I had not then perused, it would appear that this arrangement only holds good with respect to _Pezizas_, _Helvellas_, and _Morels_, and not with respect to the above-mentioned genera, the spores of which are attached (generally in a quaternary and star form) to the ends of tubes, to which Mr. Berkeley has given the name of _sporophores_; a disposition which, as he observes, had been long ago pointed out by the great Florentine mycologist, Micheli. M. Montagne, in his ‘Recherches Anatomiques et Physiologiques sur l’Hymenium,’ while he confirms the fact of a quaternary disposition of the spores in general, thinks that during the _first_ stage of their development they are lodged _within_ the sporiferous tubes, to the mouths of which they afterwards adhere by means of short spiculæ or branchlets.

These, like all other questions connected with the minute reproductive granules of funguses, require for their solution not only the most dexterous manipulation and the aid of the finest modern microscopes, but are likely even then to exercise the ingenuity of the curious.

FOOTNOTES

[1] The word _seed_ here, or wherever else introduced into the present work, is to be understood in its popular acceptation; correctly speaking, spores differ from seeds in the absence of an apparent embryo; but in a more catholic sense spores are seeds, since both are germinating granules, producing each after their kind.

[2] At from twenty to thirty baiocchi, _i. e._ at about 1 _s._ 3 _d._ a pound.

[3] The population of Rome is only 154,000; that of Naples, 360,000; and that of Venice, 180,000.

[4] The Chinese present a striking contrast with ourselves in the care which they bestow on their esculent vegetation. “Some days since, M. Stanislas Julien presented to the Academy of Sciences, at Paris, a Chinese work, which merits a word or two of notice in the present circumstances of agricultural Europe. It is a treatise, in six volumes, with plates, entitled ‘The Anti-Famine Herbal;’ and contains the descriptions and representations of four hundred and fourteen different plants, whose leaves, rinds, stalks, or roots are fitted to furnish food for the people, when drought, ravages of locusts, or the overflow of the great rivers have occasioned a failure of rice and grain. Of this book the Chinese Government annually prints thousands, and distributes them gratuitously in those districts which are most exposed to natural calamities. Such an instance of provident solicitude on the part of the Chinese Government for the suffering classes may be suggestive here at home. A more general knowledge of the properties and capabilities of esculent plants would be an important branch of popular education.”—_Athenæum_, Nov. 16, 1846.

[5] There are three kinds of esculent funguses in Italy to which the epithet _albus_ might apply, viz. the _Amanita alba_, of Persoon, the _Lycoperdon Bovista_, Linn. (or common puff-ball), and _Agaricus campestris_, Linn. (our common mushroom). The first kind grows in woods, and the second in dry uncultivated spots, whereas Ovid mentions these in conjunction with the Mallow (_Malva_), which grows in moist meadow-land; it is probable, therefore, that he here alludes to the _Pratajolo_, or meadow mushroom, or to that variety of it called from its whiteness “boule de neige.”

[6] Etymol. _ad locum_.

[7] Well-fed domestic pigs, on the authority of a friend, refuse it; but possibly, in the absence of full supplies of corn, they might be less dainty.

[8] Vittadini assures us that the “slips of dried boletus, sold on strings, are as frequently from these kinds as from the _Boletus edulis_ itself; notwithstanding which, no accident was ever known to happen from the indiscriminate use of either.”

[9] Dioscorides, who lived in the time of Nero, says that pigs dig up “truffles” in spring. Matthiolus, in his commentaries, speaks of an inferior, smooth-barked, red truffle known to the ancients, to which the above remark of Dioscorides perhaps applies; certainly it does _not_ apply to the black truffle, which begins to come into the Roman market in November, and is over long before the spring.

[10] The Thracians are said to have intended this same _misy_ under the new epithet of κεραύνιον, as though it were produced by thunder, unless indeed, as in Theoph. lib. i. cap. ix., we should read κρανίον, in which case they meant the _Lycoperdon giganteum_, a fungus frequently as big as, and in the form of, the human head: whence its name of _cranium_.

[11] Whoever has time to waste on the unprofitable speculations of the ancients concerning the parentage of funguses, and would like so to waste it, may consult Pliny, lib. xvi. cap. 8, lib. xxii. cap. 23; Hist. Nat. Dioscorides, lib. iii. cap. 78; Athenæus, lib. ii. in the Deipnosophisti; and after them Galen, Clusius, Portæ (Villæ, lib. x.), Imperato (Hist. Nat.), etc. The first really philosophical treatise which ascribes their origin, like that of other plants, to seeds, was published by Micheli, at Florence, in 1720.

[12] Roques.

[13] Vittadini.

[14] ‘Trattati dei Funghi.’ Roma, 1804.

[15] Have not both the words _Tode_ and the stool called after him some etymological, as they have undoubtedly a fanciful, connection with the word _tod_, death?

[16] Juvenal.

[17] Few minute objects are more beautiful than certain of these mucedinous _fungi fungorum_. A common one besets the back of some of the _Russulæ_ in decay, spreading over it, especially if the weather be moist, like thin flocks of light wool, presenting on the second day a bluish tint on the surface. Under a powerful magnifier, myriads of little glasslike stalks are brought into view, which bifurcate again and again, each ultimate twig ending in a semilucent head, or button, at first blue, and afterwards black; which, when it comes to burst, scatters the spores, which are then (under the microscope) seen adhering to the sides of the delicate filamentary stalks like so many minute limpets.

[18] _Vide_ the London Docks, _passim_; where he pays his unwelcome visits, and is in even worse odour than the exciseman.

[19] “Sir Joseph Banks having a cask of wine, rather too sweet for immediate use, he directed that it should be placed in a cellar, that the saccharine it contained might be more decomposed by age; at the end of three years he directed his butler to ascertain the state of the wine, when, on attempting to open the cellar-door, he could not effect it, in consequence of some powerful obstacle; the door was consequently cut down, when the cellar was found to be completely filled with a fungous production, so firm, that it was necessary to use an axe for its removal. This appeared to have grown from, or to have been nourished by, the decomposing particles of the wine, the cask being empty, and carried up to the ceiling, where it was supported by the fungus.”—_Chambers’s Journal._

[20] Withering found one of these plants on the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral; the first he had seen!

[21] _Sporendonema Muscæ._

[22] “When healthy caterpillars are placed within reach of a silkworm that has been destroyed by the Botrytis, they, too, contract the disease, and at last perish.”—_Chambers’s Journal_, October, 1845.

[23] A species of _Polystrix_ is affected, whilst alive, with a parasitic kind of fungus, called _Sphæria_, which grows out of it, and feeds upon it.

[24] Several of the French surgeons have given recitals of cases where, on removal of the bandages from sore surfaces, they have found a collection of funguses growing upon them, generally about the size of the finger (Lemery); one of them adds, that having reapplied the wrappings, a second batch came out in the course of twenty-four hours, and this for several days consecutively.