Abstract
MUSHROOMS and their congeners seem never have been in good repute since Agrippina employed one of the tribe to poison her husband, and Nero with villanous pleasantry called it the “ food of the gods.” With proverbial tenacity the bad name thus incurred has clung to the whole family of agarics, and what within certain limits might .be called a wholesome dread has become a deep-rooted and irrational prejudice, excluding from popular use a really valuable class of vegetable esculents. We cannot altogether go along with those enthusiastic mycophagists who recognise a substitute for meat in every edible fungus, and dilate on the ozmazome and other nutritious properties of the'tribe; but we readily acknowledge that their merits as secondary sources of food-supply have hitherto been unduly neglected. The great difficulty always felt in advocating the claims of the class to more extensive use has arisen from the want of some definite rules, some formula at once simple ia expression and universal in application, by which to distinguish the noxious from the innocent members. Pliny, in his Natural History, goes so far as to say that the first place amongst those things which are eaten with peril must be .assigned to agarics, and he expresses his surprise at the pleasure which men take “ in so doubtful and dangerous a meat.” But his observations show that fungi of all sorts, including even such growths as the Fistulina hepatica, were known to his countrymen and eaten by them without scruple. Indeed, in one particular the wisdom of the ancient Romans seems to have been superior to that of their descendants, for, while Horace lays down the rule—
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ROBINSON, C. British Edible Fungi . Nature 2, 518–519 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/002518a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/002518a0