MUSHROOMS AND TOADSTOOLS.
IT is only the unimaginative who should grow mushrooms in houses, in cellars, upon specially arranged trays, from carefully prepared layers of spawn. Other people should be left to find them growing in the fields. There is a peculiar pleasure which belongs to the finding of mushrooms. The discovery of one or two, or a dozen of them, adds a new and sudden sense of wealth. A moment before, and the field lay wide and empty before a careless eye; then comes the discovery, and he who strolled idly roams with busy purpose over acre after acre, to return home with to-morrow's break- fast more or less abundant in a knotted handkerchief. After that he goes out with a basket, probably to find that others have been with baskets before him. Bat he does not lose his sense of added wealth. The finding of each dish of mushrooms brings more than the reward of so much to eat; it is so much the more won in the pleasantest way from opportunities offered to others. Credit is mingled with fortune ; the mushroom-finder acknowledges to him- self that others may have passed the mushroom by, having eyes less sharp than his ; but he also gains the joy which comes with pure luck—such a joy, for instance, as comes to him who stoops to pick up a shilling suddenly espied in the middle of the road.
Laws and customs gather round the picking of mushrooms. Who may take mushrooms from a field and who may not ? There are mushrooms which grow in grass fields with rights of way through them, and those mushrooms disappear readily ; there are also mushrooms which grow in enclosed hay fields on private property, and they, too, seldom grow to old age. There are fields to which you may get access from such byways as a towpath, in which horses and cattle graze all the year round; those fields are invaded at dead of night in the height of the mushroom season, and
by dawn there is not a mushroom to be seen.. Baskets are on
their way to the local market-places, and a few hours of growth in the dark, on soil which belongs in no way to tbe marketers, add so much silver day by day to empty pockets.
But what is the established law in the matter? A case occurred not long ago in which a guest at a country house,
observing in the early hours of the morning a couple ot tramps picking mushrooms in a field belonging to his host, went out and persuaded the tramps that it would be best if they emptied their baskets. At breakfast his host, having thanked him for his enthusiasm for justice, informed him that he had acted quite illegally, and that no action could be taken against the tramps if they had refused to give up the contents of their baskets. The mushrooms were not grown as a crop; the tramps had entered the field by a gate and had done no harm to it; they had trespassed, but had done no damage. There were only two ways, he was informed, in which the owner of a field in such circumstances could protect himself against the depredations of the casual passer-by who might desire mushrooms. He might put up a board in the field, informing all who should read it that the
mushrooms in the field were cultivated, and that those who removed them without permission would be prosecuted. The other way was to plant a tree in the field. If you plant a tree in a field, so the early-rising guest was informed, you make the field into a park; and though the law does not necessarily threaten you if you remove mushrooms from a field, you may take no such liberties with a park. It must be owned that this statement of the law does not appear to be sound; but that it had been given and acted upon in this particular case, and was believed to be the law by neighbours, there is no doubt at all.
"Is it a proper mushroom ? Is it a mushroom or a toad- stool P" Those questions are probably asked more often than any others in regard to the wild fruits of the country, and the ordinary country test, of course, is to peel the doubtful fungus; if it peels, it is a mushroom. But does it matter very much one way or the other ? It would seem to matter a little less than it used to, if we may judge from one of the latest pronounce- ments as regards the edibility of various fungi to be found in a country walk. This is Mr. Edward Step's little book, " Toad- stools and Mushrooms of the Countryside" (Hutchinson, 58. net), which he describes as a pocket guide to the larger fungi, and which certainly gives the impression that you may eat, or try to eat, more toadstools than you must avoid. Some, of course, are definitely set down as poisonous ; others are very good to eat; others can be eaten; a few are said to have been eaten. The flavour and the effect of these edible or possibly edible toadstools vary in the most remarkable way. Even the poisonous ones seem not to poison all who eat them ; the Itussula emetica, for instance, that pretty little crimson- capped toadstool which is common on the ground at the foot of trees, in small quantities acts upon human- beings as its name suggests, and in large quantities is deadly, but slugs like it and eat it undisturbed. Other poisonous ones are just like edible varieties ; Mr. Step has eaten quantities of the Blusher, Amanita rubescens, which much resembles the Panther, Amanita pantherina, and he recommends the fungus he has eaten, "but be sure that you have got the Blusher and not the Panther." The average man probably gets the Panther. Sometimes the fungus, though harmless, would seem to afford doubtful pleasures. The Haltered Toadstool is "reputed to be edible, with a flavour varying from pleasant to unpleasant." The Dryad's Saddle, Polyporas squamosus, which is the big flat fungus, delightfully named, which juts out from the stems of trees, is said to be eaten on the Continent when young, but since when pressed it makes an excellent razor-strop, English cooks must draw their own conclusions. Its near relation, the Cock of the Woods, Polyporus intybaceus, must be "sweated" with butter and simmered for an hour; then, when eaten, "it has an odour reminiscent of mice." Other edible varieties are best, it seems, eaten raw. Of one of the russules, heterophylla, we learn that "the novice will be favourably impressed by its sweet, nutty taste when raw. The smell is similar to that of lard, which is said to change to the odour of crab or lobster when the fungus is cooked." The novice is offered further testa with the Orange-milk mushroom, Lactarius dediciosus,
which has long been in favour with French cooks as the "vegetable sheep's kidney." A beginner, it is suggested, would pass this by on account of its appearance. "Its dull orange-yellow cap, zoned with a deeper tint, is mostly smeared with green. If the novice in examining it chanced to break a gill-plate a reddish, saffron-coloured milk would pour out, which turns green on exposure to the air." But the experimenter with edible fungi must by no means shrink from uninviting appearances. The Butter boletus "is plentiful in pine-woods, and of fine edible quality, though the would-be fungus-eater is often de- terred from taking it on account of the thick layer of brown or purplish slime that covers the cap and makes it unpleasant to handle. This, however, is easily got rid of by rinsing." The true cook should be unafraid of sterner tasks than this. The Griping Toadstool, Lactarius &nail-toms, does not promise pleasure, and indeed its acridity has earned it the reputation of being poisonous, "but Berkeley says the Russians steep it in salt, and afterwards eat it dressed with oil and vinegar." The cook must be careful in choosing the Griping Toadstool, though, for "there are several species that come very near it, and may be mistaken for it." These thwarting resemblances form one of the great difficulties. The Velvet Cap, for instance, "makes an inferior ketchup, and gets sold for the mushroom." The Lawyer's Wig "is very good eating, and readily makes a good ketchup or a good ink." But we are warned that "one needs to look for it early in the morning, otherwise it will be found kicked into small frag- ments." Those who cook it possibly might desire also to be looked for early.
These enthusiasms for discovering edibility in the apparently inedible are doubtless infectious, and we shall eat more toad- stools in future. But in one way has not Mr. Step made our task less simple ? In this book the nomenclature seems occasionally to be oddly unfamiliar. It is not as odd as that of a recently compiled nomenclature of birds which was offered to the world a little time ago by certain naturalists, who, under the impression that they were following the principles of Linnmus, gave a number of birch( a Latin name three times repeated; the hawfinch, for instance, thus became Coccothraustes coccothraustes coccothraustes. But still the new toadstool, or rather mushroom, nomenclature seems to need explanation. The common mushroom used to be .Agaricus campestris and the horse mushroom Agaricus areensis. Now they are Psalliota campestris and P. arvensis. Is there a good reason ? To change names unnecessarily is surely to multiply difficulties. The beginner's task is severe enough as things ale; but he can hardly be expected to distinguish between edible and inedible fungi which are exactly alike, if he does not even know whether they have different names.
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