Part 12

[25] For an accurate description of these funguses, the reader is referred to the excellent work of Mr. Berkeley.

[26] These, beautiful, but fleeting as beauty’s blush, generally perish within a few hours; but I have seen some which, after a potting of 2000 years, retained their original hues unblemished, for they had been potted with the town of Pompeii, and are preserved with the other frescoes upon its walls.

[27] The _Mitrati_ are not a very numerous class, of which the _Morel_ may be taken as the type.

[28] The _Cupulati_, so called in consequence.

[29] _A. piperatus._

[30] _A. procerus._

[31] _Agaricus comatus_, in allusion no doubt to which Plautus says of the Lord Chancellor of his day, “Fungino genere est, capiti se totum tegit,”—that his wig was so long as to hide his whole person.

[32] The _Nidularias_ do so.

[33] The surface is rough with elevated papillæ, the structure fibrous, the flesh softly elastic, the colour bright red, looking like the tongue in the worst forms of gastro-enterite, with which its cold clammy surface when touched offers no correspondence.

[34] _A. micaceus._

[35] Thore.

[36] _Agaricus narcoticus_, Batsch, Fascic. vol. ii. pl. 81.

[37] _A. alliaceus._

[38] _A. cinnamomeus._

[39] Fries.

[40] Bolton.

[41] Persoon.

[42] Micheli.

[43] These last, placed in a wineglass, over a sheet of white paper, frequently disperse the seminal dust over a ring of twice the natural dimensions of the Agaric.

[44] “One dark night, about the beginning of December, while passing along the streets of the Villa de Natividade, I observed some boys amusing themselves with some luminous object, which I at first supposed to be a kind of large fire-fly; but, on making inquiry, I found it to be a beautiful phosphorescent fungus, belonging to the genus _Agaricus_, and was told that it grew abundantly in the neighbourhood, on the decaying leaves of a dwarf palm. Next day I obtained a great many specimens, and found them to vary from one to two and a half inches across. The whole plant gives out at night a bright phosphorescent light, of a pale greenish hue, similar to that emitted by the larger fire-flies, or by those curious, soft-bodied, marine animals, the _Pyrosomæ_; from this circumstance, and from growing on a palm, it is called by the inhabitants ‘Flor do Coco;’ the light given out by a few of these fungi in a dark room, was sufficient to read by. It proved to be quite a new species, and, since my return from Brazil, has been described by the Rev. M. J. Berkeley under the name of _Agaricus Gardneri_, from preserved specimens which I brought home.”—_Travels in the Interior of Brazil_, 1846.

[45] Hence it was called κρανίον (_vide_ Theoph. Lib. vol. i. cap. 9) by the ancients. Cesalpinus describes it under the name of _Peziza_, and reports that it is common in the woods of Pisa, whence men gather to eat them. We read also, in an ancient Italian writer (Cicinelli), that the environs of Padua produce enormous puff-balls, of which one (unless this author was given to _puffing_) measured not less than two feet across, in one direction, being upwards of a foot and a half in its least diameter. It was big enough, he says, to have written on its rind the celebrated inscription attributed by Dion Cassius to the Dacians, which they presented to the Emperor, “in quo scriptum erat Latinis literis Burros sociosque omnes eum hortari ut domum reverteretur pacemque coleret.” Other authors also (Alph. de Tuberibus,—not truffles, but puff-balls,—cap. xvii.; Imperato, Hist. Nat. Hol. vol. xxvii. cap. 5) speak of puff-balls of sixty and one hundred pounds weight.

[46] Hist. Plant. vol. ii. p. 275.

[47] Villæ, Lib. vol. x. cap. 80.

[48] By this word, however, the vulgar generally understood the _Cantharellus cibarius_.

[49] This species, which is somewhat rare in England, occurred in abundance this year (1847) in the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells. I found four specimens of it on the oak-roots in the Grove, one of which rose nearly a foot from the ground, measured considerably more than two and a half feet across, and weighed from eighteen to twenty pounds; the other specimens were of much smaller dimensions.

[50] Robert Scott, Act. Linn. Soc. vol. viii. p. 202.

[51] Dufresnoy.

[52] Roques.

[53] _Amadou_ is largely used in Italy, where it is called _esca_; the Latins likewise knew it by this name, though their more common appellation for it was _fomes_; the Byzantine Greeks hellenicized _esca_ into ὕσκα, which was their word for it; the ancient Greeks called it ζώπυρον. Salmasius tells us how it used to be made in his time, which indeed was the same as now: the fungus was first boiled, then beaten to pieces in a mortar, next hammered out to deprive it of its woody fibres, and lastly, being steeped in a strong solution of nitre, was left to dry in the sun. It appears, on the testimony of the anonymous author of the article “Fungo” in the ‘Dizionario Classico di Medicina,’ that it is also eaten when young; but I cannot speak of it from personal experience:—“In prima età mangiasi colto di fresco affettato e condito d’ogni modo; specialmente nelle provincie di Belluno ed Udine, o salasi per la quadragesima.”

[54] “Di questo fungo servavanosene i barbieri in cambio delle strugghie dette più volgaremente _codette_, atte a far riprendere il perduto filo a loro rasoi.”

[55] “This is the ‘Moucho more’ of the Russians, Kamtchadales, and Koriaks, who use it for intoxication; they sometimes eat it dry, but more commonly immersed in a liquor made from the _Epilobium_, and when they drink this liquor, they are seized with convulsions in all their limbs, followed with that kind of raving which accompanies a burning fever. They personify this mushroom, and, if they are urged by its effects to suicide, or any other dreadful crime, they pretend to obey its commands; to fit themselves for premeditated assassination they recur to the use of the Moucho more.”—_Rees’s Cyclopædia, art. “Agaric.”_

[56] In such cases the minute fungus is probably absorbed _in ovo_ and disseminated with the sap through the plant; as this ascends from the root, it remains undeveloped however till the corn is in ear, at which time it finds in the nascent grain the necessary conditions for its own development.

[57] The mischief thus produced by dry-rot may be arrested by steeping the affected timber in a solution of corrosive sublimate, which, forming a chemical union with the juices of the woody fibre, prevents their being abstracted by the dry-rot, that would else have maintained itself and spread at their expense.

[58] A reputation that revives may not be so good as one that survives, but the very fact of such revival shows that the good opinion formerly entertained was not altogether groundless.

[59] Enslin was in the habit of uniting this _Polyporus_ with Peruvian Bark, and obtained from it the happiest results: “Omnium mihi arridet connubium ejus cum cortice Peruviano”—to which “connubium,” no doubt, some of its good effects are to be attributed.

[60] Haller relates, that the inhabitants of Piedmont are in the habit of swallowing a small piece of this Agaric, when they have drunk with their water some of those small leeches in which it abounds. Bomare mentions of this same Agaric, that the inhabitants of Balcu use it in powder to heal blains in their cattle.

[61] Hunter.

[62] It is the Frenchman’s _heart_! “J’ai mal au cœur” means, as every one knows, in the French tongue, not ‘I am sick at heart,’ as it professes to say, but ‘I am sick at stomach’!

[63] Walpole.

[64] The phrase “I like it, but it does not like me,” which one sometimes hears at table, having a reference to some particular idiosyncrasy of the party who makes the remark, does not invalidate the truth of this general proposition.

[65] Pope. Mead, if anybody, ought to have been good authority on the subject of this particular diet. He had written, _ex professo_, upon poisons; and the Florentine mycologist Micheli had dedicated several newly-discovered funguses to him. He was therefore both a Toxicologist and a Mycologist.

[66]

“No thought too bold, no airy dream too light, That will not prompt your Theorist to write; No fact so stubborn, and no proof so strong, Will e’er convince him he _could_ argue wrong.”—_Crabbe._

[67] Broussais divides inflammatory dyspepsia into _five_ parts or acts. That Leach of leeches, whose word once passed for more than it was worth, came at last to see himself and his _sangsues_ utterly abandoned, and to have the mortification of lecturing in his old age to empty benches. “Quantum mutatus ab illo” of less than twenty years before, and who had been the cause of as much innocent bloodshedding as Napoleon himself, and used to kill his patients that his leeches might be fed!

[68] “Fungus qualiscunque sit semper _malignus_.”—_Kirker, Lib. de Pest._

[69] “_Apage_ ergo perniciosa isthæc gulæ blandimenta.”

[70] “Quot colores tot dolores, quot species tot pernicies.”

[71] M. Roques gives at the end of his treatise on funguses a long list of his mycophilous friends, including in the number many of the most eminent _medical_ men of the French capital—if medical men are more careful of what they eat than their neighbours, which, however, is exceedingly doubtful.

[72] “To eat raw mushrooms” was a proverbial expression among the Greeks, as is shown by the passage which Athenæus quotes out of a play of Antiphanes, called the ‘Proverbs’:—Ἔγω γάρ ἂν τῶν ὑμετέρων φάγοιμί τι, μύκητας ὠμοὺς αὔτικ’ ἂν φαγεῖν δοκάω.

[73] Those who themselves know better, smile to read such passages as the following, which is to be found in old Gerard’s ‘Herbal’:—“Galen affirms that they (_i. e._ funguses) are all very cold and moist, and therefore do approach unto a venomous and mothering facultie, and engender a clammy and pituitous nutriment; if eaten, therefore, I give my advice unto those that love such strange and new-fangled meates, to beware of licking honey among thorns, lest the sweetnesse of the one do not countervaille the sharpnesse and pricking of the other.”

[74] A life of labour, no doubt, will make the sorriest fare sit more lightly on the healthy stomach, than the most dainty viands which have been received into an organ that is weakened and goaded by a life of dissipation and excess; but this does not prove sorry fare to be more wholesome than that of a richer kind. No! Dyspepsia is a disease of the rich; not because they live upon the fat of the land, but plainly because they indulge in too large a quantity at a meal. Let the peasant and the lord change places for a week; place the healthy rustic at the rich man’s table, and Dives again at the other board, what would be the results to both? Would not the poor man, think you, find indigestion in ragoût, fricassees, truffles, with light wine _ad libitum_ to drink with them? and would not the rich man find that the fat pork and hard beer were worse poison than any of the made-dishes, against which he has been so lavish in his blame? In general, no doubt, to be “the happiest of mortals—to digest well” (Voltaire), men should look more to the _quantum_ and less to the _quale_ of what they eat; but they should pay some attention to this too.

[75] Ἢν δὲ πάντα ὅμοια ποιήσῃ οὐκ ἔχει τέρψιν. Π.Δ. Α. 10.

[76] That I did not always hold such an opinion as the above, to which I have since given in my adhesion, the following ode to Eupepsia, written in the days of theoretical inexperience, will sufficiently testify. I am now convinced that Hippocrates was right!—

Happy the man whose prudent care Plain boiled and roast discreetly bound; Content to feed on homely fare, On British ground! Sound sleep renounces _sugared_ peas!— No nightmares haunt the modest ration Of tender steak, that yields with ease To mastication! From stews and steams that round them play, How many a tempting dish would floor us, Had nature made no toll to pay At the pylorus!

He dines unscathed, who dines _alone_! Or shuns abroad those _corner_ dishes; No Roman garlics make him groan, Nor matelotte fishes. Then let not Vérey’s treacherous skill, Nor Véfour’s, try thy peptic forces; One comes to swallow many a pill Where many a course is! With _mushroomed_ dishes cease to strive; Nor for that _truffled crime_ inquire, Which nails the hapless goose alive, At Strasburg’s fire.

[77] Heberden wisely left it to his patients, except in acute cases of disease or when they were gluttons, “to eat what pleased them, finding that many apparently unfit substances” (_which funguses are not_) “agreed with the stomach merely because they were suitable to its feelings.” Why quote Abernethy?—but that good sense, backed by personal experience in such matters, are always worth quoting—who says, “Nothing hurts me that I eat with appetite and delight;” or Withers, unless for a like reason, who is “of opinion that the instinct of the palate, not misguided by preconceived opinion, may be satisfied, not only with impunity, but even with advantage.” It is the rule by which the brute creation is taught to shun its poison and to choose its food: to a considerable extent, it should be ours also.

[78] Roques, ‘Traité sur les Champignons.’

[79] Æschines.

[80] “Pratensibus optima fungis Natura est.”—_Horace._

[81] Locality has a great effect upon almost all that we eat: our very mutton varies in different counties; compare the town-bred gutter-fed poultry of London with that of twenty miles around; fish vary, the tench out of different ponds are different; fruits vary with the soil; are potatoes everywhere the same?

[82] Persons have fancied themselves poisoned when they were not; indigestion produced by mushrooms is looked upon with fear and suspicion, and if a medical man be called in, the stomach-pump used, and relief obtained, nothing will persuade either patient or practitioner that this has not been a case of poisoning. “You have saved my life,” says the one. “I think you will not be persuaded to eat any more mushrooms for some time,” says the other: and so they part, each under the impression that he knows more about mushrooms than anybody else can tell him.

[83] It grows not only throughout Europe, but in India also.

[84] We should apply the same rules of discrimination here as elsewhere. Have we not picked potatoes for our table out of the deadly family of _Solana_? selected with care the _garden_ from the _fool’s_ parsley? And do we not pickle gherkins, notwithstanding their affinity to the _Elaterium momordicum_, which would poison us if we were to eat it?

[85] “N’est-il pas bien plus simple et bien plus sûr en même temps, _puisqu’on le peut_, de prévenir les maux, que de spéculer sur les moyens si souvent incertains de les guérir?”—Bull. Pl. Vénén. p. 11.

[86] _Vide_ Vittadini and Roques.

[87] Roques fell in with two soldiers at St. Cyr, who had gathered and were in the act of carrying off twice the quantity of this fungus necessary to kill the regiment, when he interfered, and no doubt saved many lives in doing so. The soldiers, it appears, had mistaken the _Ag. necator_ for the _Hydnum repandum_, to which it bears some slight resemblance in colour, and in nothing else.

[88] The _converse_ of this remark by no means holds true; the _Amanita verna_, the _Am. phalloides_, the _Ag. semiglobatus_, _dryophilus_, and _muscarius_, though amongst the most deadly of this class of plants, do not change colour on being cut; the flesh of the first two is, moreover, of a tempting whiteness, like that of the common puff-ball, than which there is not a safer or a better fungus. “Omnino ne crede colori” is our only safe motto here.

[89] Johnson’s Dictionary.

[90] He was wrong here: the oak produces both the _Fistulina hepatica_ and the _Agaricus fusipes_, two excellent funguses, particularly the last, which, properly dressed or pickled, have not many rivals.

[91] As was known to the Greeks, ‘Prepare your funguses with vinegar, salt, or honey, for thus you will rob them of their poison,’ οὕτω γὰρ αὐτῶν τὸ πνιγώδες ἀφαιρεῖται.

[92] Vittadini, however, ate largely of this fungus, which he describes as very disagreeable, though it did not prove poisonous to him.

[93] Puccinelli.

[94] In a whole family, cut off in the year 1843, at Lucca, by dining on some poisonous Boletuses, drawn and first described by Professor Puccinelli under the ominous name of _Boletus terribilis_, besides most extensive ulceration of the mucous coat of the intestines throughout a very considerable portion of their extent, together with injection of the vessels of the brain, the lungs were found congested, and the cavities of the heart distended, with coagula of blood.

[95] For a most interesting record of all the more recent poisonings from funguses in Italy, the reader may consult Professor delle Chiaje’s work on Toxicology. The following, the only one I shall give, is to be found in Vittadini’s excellent work on funguses:—

“Giovanna Ballerini, montanara, d’ anni 26, moglie di Luigi Dodici, nativa di Brugnello, Stato Sardo, e domiciliata in Lardirago, distretto di Belgiojoso, provincia di Pavia, mangiò la sera del 19 maggio, 1831, in compagnia di due suoi nipoti, Giuseppe Ballerini d’ anni 6, e Maria, d’ anni 12, buona copia d’ agarici di primavera, cotti nella minestra. Erano dessi stati colti nel vicin bosco della Rossa, e da quella sventurata probabilmente scambiati coi Prugnuoli (_Ag. mouceron_, Bull.), funghi generalmente conosciuti da quegli alpigiani sotto il nome di Spinaroli, o Maggenghi. All’ indomani allontanossi Giovanna da casa, come era suo costume, onde provvedere ai proprj bisogni, ma trascorse alcune ore venne assalita da forte oppressione all’ epigastrio, da nausee, da conati di vomito, ecc., e costretta infine verso il meriggio dalla gravezza del patire a tornarsene a casa, ove trovò dallo stesso male tormentati anche i nipoti. I principali fenomeni morbosi che presentavano quegli infelici all’ arrivo di Giovanna erano: nausee continue, dolori acutissimi allo stomaco ed alle intestina, deliquj frequenti, convulsioni, ecc. Poco dopo Maria ed in seguito Giovanna vennero prese da vomito ostinato di materie bigio-nerastre, a cui s’accoppiava bentosto, per colmo di sventura, un’ abbondante soccorrenza della stessa materia, e più innanzi di pretto sangue. Impotente a recere, Giuseppe si struggeva in vani conati di vomito. Chiamato verso sera in loro soccorso il sig. dott. Luigi Casorati, medico condotto del luogo, mio collega ed amico, s’ adoperò ma invano per sostare il vomito ed il colera, che specialmente in Maria ed in Giovanna andavano sempre più imperversando. Le bevande mucilaginose, il latte, gli oppiati, le fomentazioni ammollienti sull’ addome a nulla giovarono. Si tentò la sanguigna, ma anche questa senza effetto. Alle ore 7 del mattino del giorno 21, 38 ore circa dall’ ingestione del fungo, Giuseppe, chi si era ostinatamente rifiutato ad ogni medicina, non era più; nè miglior sorte incontravano Maria e Giovanna, chi, tradotte all’ ospedale di Pavia, non ostante i soccorsi che vennero loro prodigati, perivano nella stessa giornata fra le più terribili angosce, e senza perdere gran fatto l’ uso dei sensi, la prima verso il meriggio, l’ altra verso le ore sette pomeridiane. All’ autopsia del cadavere di Giuseppe Ballerini, eseguitasi in Lardirago, sotto i miei occhi, dallo stesso Dottor Casorati che gentilmente me ne fece invito, ed alla quale assisteva pure il sig. dott. G. Galliotti, si trovò lo stomaco zeppo di un liquido verdastro, entro cui nuotavano ancora, unitamente a buona porzione di riso e di erbe, varj pezzetti del fungo non ancora decomposti, e che potei agevolmente riconoscere a qual parte della pianta appartenessero; la mucosa di quel viscere sensibilmente injettata, e coperta, specialmente lungo la piccola curvatura ed in vicinanza del piloro, di grandi macchie di color roseo-livido intenso. Le intestina tenui pur esse ove più ove meno injettate, e del color dello scarlatto, le crasse morbosamente ristrette, ma meno delle tenui ingorgate; sì le une che le altre vuote d’alimenti, e non contenenti che poca quantità di muco bigio-nerastro e qualche lombrico. Le meningi erano anch’ esse sommamente injettate, specialmente la pia; la sostanza del cervello meno consistente del naturale, punteggiata di rosso, e la base dello stesso nuotante in una quantità considerabile di siero sanguinolento.”—_Vitt._ p. 340.

[96] When dried, gr. xx.-xxv. will scarcely produce the effects of gr. v. of the fungus when first gathered.—_Vitt._

[97] The total quantity of moisture absorbed by funguses, during development and growth, is great; thus, if a number of small Agarics, still in their wrappers, be placed in wineglasses half filled with water, this will be rapidly absorbed, even before they break through their membrane. Moreover, if Agarics or Boletuses, already developed, be placed in glasses containing so many ounces of water, the amount of which has been previously ascertained, and equal to that in another glass, by which to make allowance for what has been lost by evaporation, the result will generally be that a quantity of water, equal to from one-fourth to one-third of the full weight of each fungus, will have been absorbed and exhaled again in two days. The redundant moisture of those plants is rendered conspicuous if we place a Boletus on a watch-glass, the surface of which is speedily beaded with drops of water, as if it had been in the rain; while the quantity of fluid is sometimes so great as to defeat the object we had in placing it there, viz. that of collecting the spores.

[98] The reader desirous of a detailed account of this interesting fungus, should consult a small quarto _brochure_ published some years ago, by Professor Gasparini, of Naples, who was preparing a second edition in the autumn of 1844, with numerous additions, which has, no doubt, been reprinted.

[99] Or rather, as Professor Tenore has told me, from the _Populus nigra_, var. _Neapolitana_.

[100] Müller declares that fermentation is itself a fungus, which continues to feed and multiply so long as it finds the elements of nutrition in the liquid in which it originates. This, then, is employing one fungus life to evoke another.

[101] All blocks of this nut-wood do not bear. Professor Sanguinetti informs me that the peasants in the Abruzzi, who bring in these logs, know perfectly which will succeed and which will not; “a knowledge,” he adds, “to which closest attention during all the years that I have been employed by the Papal Government as superintendent of the fungus market, has not yet enabled me to attain.”

[102] On digging up the earth in the neighbourhood of a ring in which _A. prunulus_ was at the time growing, I found the mould to the depth of a foot and more, hoary, with an arachnoid spawn strongly charged with the odour of this mushroom. Persoon found that to destroy a fairy-ring of the same Agaric, it was necessary to dig to a considerable depth, when the next crop that came up was disseminated sporadically over the ground.

[103] This was the opinion of the Greeks, who called funguses γηγενεῖς, or earthborn.

[104] Just as in the inorganic world, chemical analysis is frequently the precursor of new forms of matter resulting from the new affinities which take place, so when a vegetable dies, and the synthesis of its structural arrangement is broken up, nature frequently avails herself of this season of decomposition, to bring new individuals out of the decaying structures of the old, which, in consequence of a beautiful pre-arrangement, find there all the requisite supplies for their growth and future maintenance.