“If shapes they can be called, that shape have noneDeterminate,”
“If shapes they can be called, that shape have noneDeterminate,”
“If shapes they can be called, that shape have noneDeterminate,”
“If shapes they can be called, that shape have none
Determinate,”
of such tree parasites as are fain to mould themselves at the will of their entertainer (the fate of parasites, whether under oak or mahogany), mention may be made of two, of which the forms are at once singular and constant; one exactly like an ear, and given for some good reason to Judas (AuriculaJudæ), clings to several trees, and trembles when you touch it; the other, which lolls out from the bark of chestnut-trees (Lingua di Castagna), is so like a tongue in shape and general appearance,[33]that in the days of enchanted trees you would not have cut it off to pickle or to eat on any account, lest the knight to whom it belonged should afterwards come to claim it of you. The above are amongst the most remarkable of the many Protean forms assumed by funguses; as to their colours, we find in one genus only species which correspond to every hue! TheAgaricus Cæsareus, theA. muscarius, theA. sanguineus, assume the imperial purple, theA. violaceusa beautiful violet, theA. sulphureusa bright yellow, theA. adustusa dingy black, theA. exquisitus, and many others, a milk-white; whilst theA. virescenstakes that which, in this class of plants, is the rarest of all to meet with, a pale-green colour. The upper surface of some is zoned with concentric circles of different hues; sometimes it is spotted, at other times of a uniform tint. The bonnets of some shine as if they were sprinkled withmica;[34]these have a rich velvety, those a smooth kid-like covering stretched over them. Somepileiare imbricated with brown scales, some flocked with white shreds of membrane, and some are stained with various-coloured milks secreted from within. The consistence of funguses is very different according to their sort, and the epithets of woody, corky, leathery, spongy, fleshy, gelatinous, pulpy, or mucous, will all find fitting application to some of them. Occasionally a fungus is secreted soft, but hardens by degrees into a compact and woody texture.
Both one and the other are far more numerous in this class of plants than in any other with which we are acquainted. As to odours, though these be generally most powerful in the fresh condition of the fungus, they are sometimes increased by drying it, during which process too some species, inodorous before, acquire an odour, and not always a pleasant one. Some yield an insupportable stench; thePhallus impudicusandClathrus cancellatusare of this kind. A botanist had by mistake taken one of the former into his bedroom; he was soon awakened by an intolerable fœtor, and was glad to open his window and get rid of it, as he hoped, and thePhallustogether. Here he was disappointed; “sublatâ causâ non tollitur effectus,” the fœtor remaining nearly the same for some hours afterwards. A lady, a friend of mine, who was drawing one in a room, was obliged to take it into the open air to complete her sketch. As to theClathrus, I have found ten minutes in a room with it nine too many: it becomes insupportably offensive in a short time, and its infective stench has given rise to a superstition entertained of it throughout the Landes, viz. that it is capable of producing cancer—in consequence of which superstition the inhabitants, who call it Cancrou, or Cancer, cover it carefully over, lest by accident some one should chance to touch it, and become infected with that horrible disease in consequence.[35]Batsch has described an Agaric[36]of so powerful and peculiar a smell, that before he could finish his picture (for he was drawing it) a violent headache made him desist, “vehementi afficiebar capitis dolore.” Of the others, some are graveolent in a savoury or in an unsavoury sense. This smells strong of onions,[37]that ofcinnamon,[38]from which it takes its name; theA. ostreatus(auct. nost.) most powerfully of Tarragon;A. odoratus, and theCantharellus, like apricots and ratafia (Purton);Boletus salicinus, “like the bloom of May” (Abbott); theA. sanguineus, when dry, savours of a stale poultice;A. piperatus, of theTriglia, or red mullet; theHydnagenerally give out a smell of tallow; moulds have their own smells, which are mouldy and musty; some exhale the smell of putrid meat, many the odour of fresh meal; the spawn ofA. prunulusand of the puff-balls (Lycoperdons) exhale an odour similar to the perfect plants; but thePietra funghaia, filled with the spores of its ownPolyporus, is without smell. When fresh, there is scarcely any perceptible odour inBoletus edulisorB. luridus, nor yet in theA. Cæsareuswhen recently gathered. A word about their tastes will suffice: with so many smells, they must needs have flavours to correspond, and so they have; sapid, sweet, sour, peppery, rich, rank, acrid, nauseous, bitter, styptic, might be all found in an English “gradus” (though at present, I am sorry to say, without any lines from poets in whose writings they occur), after the word ‘Fungus.’ In a few, generally of an unsafe character, there is little or no taste in the mouth while they are being masticated, but shortly after deglutition, the fauces become dry, and a sense of more or less constriction is apt to supervene, which frequently continues for some time afterwards.
Soft and yielding as vegetable structures appear to the touch, the expansive force of their growth is almost beyond calculation. The effects of this power, of which the experience of every one will furnish him with some instances, are perhapsnowhere more strikingly exemplified than amidst the ruins of its own creation. Coeval with many old brick fabrics of earlier times, perhaps embedded in the very mortar which holds them together, it may lurk there for centuries in quiescence, till once arousing its energies, it continues to exert them in ceaseless activity ever after. It has at Rome planted its pink Valerians on her highest towers, and its wild fig-tree in the breaches of her walls; nor are the granite obelisks of her piazzas, nor the classic groups in marble on her Quirinal mount, entirely exempt from its encroachments. A conspiracy of plants,one hundred strong, have long ago planned the destruction of the Coliseum; their undermining process advances each year, and neither iron nor new brickwork can arrest it long. That old Roman cement, which the barbarians gave up as impracticable, and the pickaxe of the Barberini had but begun to disintegrate, will, ere the lapse of another century, be effectually pulled to pieces by the rending arm of vegetation. Here, as erst in Juvenal’s time, themala ficusfinds no walls too strong to rive asunder, no tower beyond the reach of its scaling, no monument too sacred for it to touch. In the class of plants immediately under consideration, while the expansive effort of growth is equal to what it is in other cases, its effects are far more startling from their suddenness. M. Bulliard (to cite one or two instances out of a great many) relates, that on placing aPhallus impudicuswithin a glass vessel, the plant expanded so rapidly as to shiver its sides with an explosive detonation as loud as that of a pistol. Dr. Carpenter, in his ‘Elements of Physiology,’ mentions that “in the neighbourhood of Basingstoke a paving-stone, measuring twenty-one inches square, and weighing eighty-three pounds, was completely raised an inch and a half out of its bed by a mass of toadstools, of from six to seven inches indiameter, and that nearly the whole pavement of the town suffered displacement from the same cause.” A friend has seen a crop of puff-balls raise large flagstones considerably above the plane of their original level; and I have myself recently witnessed an extensive displacement of the pegs of a wooden pavement which had been driven nine inches into the ground, but were heaved up irregularly, in several places, by small bouquets of Agarics, growing from below.
Funguses have a remarkable power of re-forming such parts of their substance as have been accidentally or otherwise removed. Vittadini found that when the tubes of aBoletuswere cut out from a growing plant, they were after a time reproduced. Where deep holes have been eaten into these plants by snails, such holes, on theBoletusattaining to its full growth, are partially refilled. If the tenderPolyporusbe cut across, the wound immediately sets about healing by the first intention, leaving not even a cicatrice to mark the original seat of the injury. TheLycoperdons(Bovista), which are often accidentally wounded by the scythe, have the same faculty of repairing the injury, remodelling afresh the parts that may have been excised from them.[39]
In a recent work on ‘Insect Life,’ I have discoursed somewhat at large on the insufficiency of any kind of movements as proofs of sensation, quoting, amidst other evidences to this effect, certain remarkable movements in plants. Some of the present family exhibit the phenomena of insensitive motion in a remarkable manner, and might have been added to thelist already cited in that publication. Mr. Robson has given us a very interesting account of the movements he observed in the scarletClathrus, which is here transcribed in his own words. It is interesting to notice how an unbiassed observer uses the very terms to designate the movements of a plant which would have been minutely descriptive of those of an insect:—“At first I was much surprised to see a part of the fibres, that had got through a rupture in the top of theClathrus, moving like the legs of a fly when laid on his back. I then touched it with the point of a pin, and was still more surprised when I saw it present the appearance of a little bundle of worms entangled together, the fibres being all alive. I next took the little bundle of fibres quite out, and the animal motion was then so strong as to turn the head halfway round, first one way and then another, and two or three times it got out of the focus. Almost every fibre had a different motion; some of them twined round one another, and then untwined again, whilst others were bending, extending, coiling, waving, etc. The fibres had many little balls adhering to their sides, which I take to be the seeds, and I observed many of them to be disengaged at every motion of the fibres; the seeds appeared like gunpowder finely granulated.” Instances from other authors abound. “AnHelvella inflata, on being touched by me once, threw up its seeds in the form of a smoke, which arose with an elastic bound, glittering in the sunshine like particles of silver.”[40]“TheVibrissea truncorum, taken from water and exposed to the rays of the sun, though at first smooth, is soon covered with white geniculated filaments, which start from thehymenium, and have an oscillating motion.”[41]ThePilobolus, of which so accurate an account has been given us by the great Florentine mycologist,[42]casts,as its name imports, its seeds into the air; these also escape with a strong projectile force from the upper surface of Pezizas, the anfractuosities of the Morel, and from the gills of Agarics.[43]
Several kinds of funguses, and the spawn of the truffle, emit a phosphorescent light; of the first, theAgaricus olearius, not uncommon in Italy, is sometimes seen at night, feebly shining amidst the darkness of the olive grove. The coal-mines near Dresden have long been celebrated for the production of funguses which emit a light similar to a pale moonlight. Mr. Drummond describes an Australian fungus with similar properties; and another very interesting one, an Agaric, is noticed by Mr. Gardner, in his ‘Travels in Brazil.’[44]
Most funguses do not present great anomalies in their size,but retain nearly the same dimensions throughout the whole course of their being; some few species, however, seem to have a faculty of almost indefinite expansion. The usual size of a puff-ball, as we all know, is not much larger than an egg, but some puff-balls attain to the dimensions of the human head,[45]or exceed it. Mr. Berkeley quotes the case of aPolyporus squamosus, which in three weeks grew to seven feet five inches in periphery, and weighed thirty-four pounds; also of aPolyporus fraxineus, which in a few years measured forty-two inches across. Clusius[46]tells us of a fungus in Pannonia, of such immense size, that after satisfying the cravings of a large mycophilous household, enough of it remained to fill a chariot; this must have been thePolyporus frondosus, to whichPolyporusJohn Bapt. Porta[47]also alludes as that calledgallinace[48]by the Neapolitans, which is so big, he says, that you can scarcely make your hands meet round it, “brachiis diductis vix homo complecti possit;” he had known it attain twelve pounds weight in a few days.[49]Bolton,in 1787, found anAgaricus muscarius, which, “after the removal of a considerable portion of its stalk, weighed nearly two pounds;” Withering, anA. Georgii, “which weighed fourteen pounds,” and Mr. Stackhouse another of the same species in Cornwall, “which was eighteen inches across, and had a stem as thick as a man’s wrist;” and I lately picked in the park at Buckhurst, aBoletus eduliswhich measured twenty-eight inches round its pileus, and eight round the stem, and a few days later aB. pachypus, the girth of which was thirty-two inches.
Of all vegetable productions these are the most highly azotized, that is, animalized in their composition—a fact not only evinced by the strong cadaverous smell which some of them give out in decay, and by the savoury animalized meat which others afford at table, but on the evidence of chemistry also. Thus Dr. Marcet has proved that, like animals, they absorb a large quantity of oxygen, and disengage in return, from their surface, a large quantity of carbonic acid; all however do not exhale carbonic acid, but, in lieu of it, some give out hydrogen, and others azotic gas. They yield, moreover, to chemical analysis the several components of which animal structures are made up; many of them, in addition to sugar, gum, resin, a peculiar acid called fungic acid, and a variety of salts, furnish considerable quantities ofalbumen,adipocire, andosmazome, which last is that principlethat gives its peculiar flavour to meat gravy. ThePolyporus sulphureusis frequently covered with little crystals of the binoxalate of potash;[50]theAgaricus piperatusyields the acetate of potash,[51]and it is probable that other funguses of which we have as yet no recorded analysis will, on the institution of such, be found to contain some new and unexpected ingredient peculiar to themselves. When these several substances have been duly extracted from funguses, there is left behind for a common base the solid structure of the plant itself; this, which is calledfungine, is white, flabby, insipid in its taste, but highly nutritious in its properties. If nitric acid be poured upon it, an immediate disengagement of azotic gas takes place, and several new substances are the result: a bitter principle, a reddish resinoid matter, hydrocyanic and oxalic acids, and two remarkable fatty substances, whereof one resembles tallow, the other wax. If dilute sulphuric acid be poured upon this fungine, no change ensues; but if muriatic acid be substituted, the result is a jelly.
The uses to which funguses have been put are various, and, had the properties of these plants been as extensively investigated as those which belong to the phanerogamic classes, they would probably by this time have proved still more numerous: some, as thePolyporus sulphureus, furnish a useful colour for dyeing;[52]theAgaricus atramentariusmakes ink; divers Lycoperdons, of which other mention will be made presently when we come to speak of such species as are esculent, have also been employed for stupefying bees, for stanching blood, and for making tinder; their employment in the first of these capacities, seems to have escaped theobservation of the accurate author of ‘Les Jardins,’ who has mentioned the others:—
“Ce puissant Agaric, qui du sang épanchéArrête les ruisseaux, et dont le sein fidèleDu caillou pétillant recueille l’étincelle.”
“Ce puissant Agaric, qui du sang épanchéArrête les ruisseaux, et dont le sein fidèleDu caillou pétillant recueille l’étincelle.”
“Ce puissant Agaric, qui du sang épanchéArrête les ruisseaux, et dont le sein fidèleDu caillou pétillant recueille l’étincelle.”
“Ce puissant Agaric, qui du sang épanché
Arrête les ruisseaux, et dont le sein fidèle
Du caillou pétillant recueille l’étincelle.”
The ‘caillou,’ alas, like the poet who struck this spark out of it, is now obsolete; butamadouis still in vogue, being employed for many household purposes; in addition to which, a medical practitioner of Covent Garden has of late been in the habit of using extensive sheets of it to cover over and protect the backs of those bedridden invalids whose cruel sufferings make such large demands upon our sympathy,—for the alleviation of which so little is to be done!—as it is more elastic than chamois leather, it is less liable to crumple up when lain upon, and on this account has been preferred to it by several of our metropolitan surgeons of eminence; some employ it also as a gentle compress over varicose veins, where it supports the distended vessels without pressing too tightly upon the limb. Gleditsch relates, that the poorer inhabitants of Franconia stitch it together, and make dresses of it; and also that the Laplanders burn it in the neighbourhood of their dwellings, to secure their reindeer from the attacks of gadflies, which are repelled by the smoke; thus “good at need,” it really deserves the epithet of ‘puissant,’ given to it by Delille.[53]
ThePolyporus squamosusmakes a razor-strop far superior to any of those at present patented, and sold, with high-sounding epithets, far beyond their deserts. To prepare thePolyporusfor this purpose, it must be cut from the ash-tree in autumn, when its juices have been dried and its substance has become consolidated; it is then to be flattened out for twenty-four hours in a press, after which it should be carefully rubbed with pumice, sliced longitudinally, and every slip that is free from the erosions of insects be then glued upon a wooden stretcher. Cesalpinus knew all this! and the barbers in his time knew it too;[54]and it is not a little remarkable that so useful an invention should, in an age of puffing, advertisement, and improvement, like our own, have been entirely lost sight of. Imperato employed and recommends it as an excellent detergent, with which to brush and comb out the scurf from the hair.
TheAgaricus muscariusis largely employed in Kamtchatka, in decoction with theEpilobium angustifolium, as an intoxicating liquor.[55]The Laplanders smear it on the walls and bedposts of their dwellings, to destroy bugs (Linn.); andClusius relates, that it is sold extensively in the market at Frankfort, to poison flies; for this purpose, it is either cut into small pieces and thrown about the premises, or else boiled in milk and placed upon the window-sills; in either case it is vastly inferior in efficacy to that celebrated “mort aux mouches,” the impure oxide of cobalt, that is, to the arsenic which this contains. The above are a few of the uses, exclusive of the esculent or medical ones, to which funguses have been put; it is fair, however, to notice that they maintain a debtor, as well as a creditor, account with mankind, in which the balance seems to be occasionally quite against us; those that are most injurious are generally, as has been already stated, of the microscopic kinds; whereof some attack young plants still underground, emulging them completely of their juices, in consequence of which they perish; others, like the corn-blights, permit the plant to attain maturity before they begin their work of destruction, and destroy it just as it is beginning to fructify.[56]The fearful epidemics to which grain so infected has given rise are well known, though it is still a matter of question whether the ergoted corn owes its unwholesome qualities to the injury which it had sustained from the blight, or to the blight itself. Though the mischief produced by parasitic funguses be unquestionably great, this occasional and very partial evil is more than compensated by the much greater amount of good accomplished solely by their agency, in the assistance they afford to the decomposition of animal and vegetable tissues, which has procured for them the name, not unaptly applied, of “nature’s scavengers.”This decomposition they effect by assimilating, through the medium of their radicles, the juices of the decaying structure in which they are developed, loosening thereby its cohesion, and causing it to break up into a rapid dissolution of its parts.[57]
Of the funguses formerly employed in medicine few are now in vogue; the ergot of rye still keeps its ground, and in cases of protracted labour, when judiciously employed, is valuable in assisting nature when unequal to the necessary efforts of parturition. Another fungus, formerly much in fashion, though now put on the shelf, seems really to deserve further trial; I mean thePolyporus suaveolens(Linn.), which in that most intractable disease, tubercular consumption, surely claims to be tried when there are such respectable authorities to vouch for its surprising effects, in cases where everything else had been notoriously unsuccessful.[58]Sartorius was the first to prescribe it as a remedy in phthisis, and its employment with this view, since his day, has at various times been præconized on the Continent; the dose generally recommended being a scruple of the powder two or three times a day. Of the cases published by Professors Schmidel and Wendst (which have an air of good faith in their recital, well entitling them to consideration), I abridge one as an example, though the others are not less interesting; andwhile it is certainly to be regretted that the absence of stethoscopic indications should prevent our having any positive evidence as to the precise condition of the diseased lung, or of the nature of the secretion expectorated, still, even supposing them to be simple cases of chronic bronchitis, with marasmus the efficacy of the remedy is scarcely less striking or instructive. “A young man, ætat. twenty-one, was seized at the beginning of autumn with inflammatory cough and hæmoptysis, which were partially subdued by V. S. and the ordinary antiphlogistic treatment; but the cough, coming on again with renewed severity during the winter, was accompanied with the expuition of glairy mucus, which was sometimes specked with blood. Towards the spring the young man had become much thinner, and was continuing to waste away; the expectoration also had changed its colour, and had become fetid and green; his nights were feverish and disturbed; he had no desire for food, and ate but little; his ankles had begun to swell; he had copious night-sweats and diarrhœa. A teaspoonful of an electuary of theP. suaveolensin honey was given him three times a day, andnothing else; and, extraordinary as it may appear, under this treatment the sweats speedily began to diminish with the cough, and after a three months’ continuance of the medicine the patient entirely recovered.”[59]
ThePolyporus laricis, the so-called Agaric of pharmacy, is a powerful but most uncertain medicine, and has been also recommended in consumption. I once administered a few grains of it in this disease, when violent pains and hypercatharsissupervened, which lasted for several hours. MM. B. Lagrange and Braconnot found it to contain a large quantity of an acrid resin, to which it no doubt owes its hypercathartic properties. To judge from this single case, which, however, tallies with the experience of others, I should say that this fungus was, in medicine, to be looked upon as a very suspicious ally.[60]TheA. muscariushas also been used in medicine. Whistling, so long ago as 1778, wrote on its healing virtues, in Latin, recommending its powder as a valuable application with which to sprinkle sanious sores and excoriated nipples. Plenck gave drachm doses of it internally in epilepsy, and, together with Bernhard and Whistling, attests its success. It appears that thePhallus mucusin China, and theLycoperdon carcinomalenear the Cape of Good Hope, are used also by the inhabitants of those countries as external applications for cancerous sores. ThePhallus, rubbed upon the skin, is said to deaden its sensibility, like thenarke, or electric skate.
If all the good things ever said about the stomach since the days of Menenius Agrippa, or before his time, could be collected, they would doubtless form an interesting volume; Aretæus has somewhere quaintly, but not unaptly, called it the “house of Plato;” in another place he speaks of it as the “seat” (as if κατ’ ἐξοχὴν) “of pleasure and of pain;” and so it is indeed, and it has moreover a notorious tendency, when provoked, to cool our charity and to heat our blood; itssympathies by nervous attachments, both of “continuity” and of “contiguity,”[61]with the other organs of the body, are extensive and complicated; no wonder then that it should have enlisted ours in its behalf, and that few of us would offend it wittingly, though by indiscretions we do offend it continually.
In the “sensual philosophy,” of the French school particularly, the stomach has received marked attention, ranking in that country as the most noble of theviscera.[62]Even in those republican times when no other rights were held sacred throughout France, the privileges of the stomach were respected; when men found that they might get on quite as well, or better, with a bad heart, but that they could not get on so well without a good digestion, it is not so much to be wondered at if they made idols of their bellies, established a School of Cooks to rival the School of Athens, and became famous for “those charming little suppers in which they used to set the decencies of life at defiance.”[63]But if in France far too much attention has been paid to the culinary art, too little attention has surely been paid to it at home; for the art of cookery, properly understood, is not only the art of pleasing the palate, but the stomach also.[64]In France, the dinner is the thought of the morning, and sometimes the business of the day, but in France everybody dines; in England, where the word ‘dinner’ never occurs till it is announced,a few wealthy men dine well, the middling ranks badly, and the poor not at all. Not that even the poorer orders generally want the necessary materials for such repast; they frequently consume more butcher’s meat than is consumed by their Continental neighbours; it is simply that they want skill in preparing it. If it be scanty, they cannot tell how to make the most of it; if it be homely, they cannot tell how to improve its flavour by uniting and blending with it a certain class of inexpensive luxuries, which, though they grow everywhere throughout the country, are everywhere neglected. Touching the wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of these, I have now a few words to address to the common-sense reader; that is, to him who prefers feasting upon funguses to fasting out of mere prejudice. Formerly men used to refer such questions as this to their physician; they would
“Try what Mead or Cheselden advised.”[65]
“Try what Mead or Cheselden advised.”[65]
“Try what Mead or Cheselden advised.”[65]
“Try what Mead or Cheselden advised.”[65]
intending, perhaps, to take some little poetical license with it afterwards. Abernethy, on the anecdote of the oysters and oyster-shells being duly substantiated, would have beenostracizedfrom polite society in those days of decorous etiquette, when, as medical men affected to be moredientereumaticwith the insides of their patients than any of us now pretend to be, they must needs have been far more affable when consulted on such cases than we of the present day might be; though they did not therefore always answer the same question in the same way; one, for instance, “Le médecin Tant Pis,” would frequentlyproscribethe very things that his rival, “Le médecin Tant Mieux,” had just been recommending. When mencame to find they must either give up some favourite article of food or else give up the anathema pronounced against it, they generally preferred the latter course, and were sure, to use a medical phrase, to “do well” if they did so; whilst a few wretched hypochondriacs, adopting the other alternative, and living strictlyen régime, became only the more hypochondriacal for their pains.
None but a determined theorist[66]would nowadays think of prescribing diet for the stomach of a single patient, far less for all those of a polygastric public; neither does an enlightened, self-educated public, that can read Liebig and thoroughly appreciate its own case, hold out much encouragement for such advice. The day is past without return for long-winded prose epic on indigestion; a livelier mode of dealing with the subject ofnon-naturals, in the shape of novels and romances, has won the public ear. Broussais’ five-act tragedy of ‘Gastro-Enteritis’[67]has received its last plaudits; already has Crabbe’seuthanasiato this class of authors attained its full accomplishment:—
“Ye tedious triflers, Truth’s destructive foes,Ye sons of Fiction clad in stupid prose,O’erweening teachers, who, yourselves in doubt,Light up false fires and send us far about,Long may the spider round your pages spin,Subtle and slow, her emblematic gin.Buried in dust and lost in silence dwell,Most potent, dull, and reverend friends, farewell!”
“Ye tedious triflers, Truth’s destructive foes,Ye sons of Fiction clad in stupid prose,O’erweening teachers, who, yourselves in doubt,Light up false fires and send us far about,Long may the spider round your pages spin,Subtle and slow, her emblematic gin.Buried in dust and lost in silence dwell,Most potent, dull, and reverend friends, farewell!”
“Ye tedious triflers, Truth’s destructive foes,Ye sons of Fiction clad in stupid prose,O’erweening teachers, who, yourselves in doubt,Light up false fires and send us far about,Long may the spider round your pages spin,Subtle and slow, her emblematic gin.Buried in dust and lost in silence dwell,Most potent, dull, and reverend friends, farewell!”
“Ye tedious triflers, Truth’s destructive foes,
Ye sons of Fiction clad in stupid prose,
O’erweening teachers, who, yourselves in doubt,
Light up false fires and send us far about,
Long may the spider round your pages spin,
Subtle and slow, her emblematic gin.
Buried in dust and lost in silence dwell,
Most potent, dull, and reverend friends, farewell!”
No article of diet was ever half so roughly handled as the fungus. What diatribes against it might be cited from the works of Athenæus, Dioscorides, Galen, Pliny, the Arabian physicians, and all their commentators! What terrible recitals, too, of poisoning from some few species have been industriously circulated, and the unfavourable inference drawn from these, been applied to the whole tribe—a mistake which some writers, even in modern times, have perpetuated. Thus, Kirker votes the whole “a family of malignants;”[68]thus too Allen and Batarra pen unsolicitedapages,[69]and warn us, in an especial manner, to beware of them; while Scopoli includes in his very definition of a fungus, that it is of a class of plants which are always to be suspected, and which are for the most part poisonous. Tertullian, with more of epigram than of truth, makes out, that for every different hue they display there is a pain to correspond to it, and just so many modes of death as there are distinct species;[70]to all which, and a great deal more similar rhapsody and invective, tens of thousands of our Continental neighbours in the daily habit of eating nothing else but funguses might reply, in the words of Plautus—
“Adeone me fuissefungumut qui illis crederem?”
“Adeone me fuissefungumut qui illis crederem?”
“Adeone me fuissefungumut qui illis crederem?”
“Adeone me fuissefungumut qui illis crederem?”
Those who abuse funguses generally do so from prejudice rather than from personal experience, objecting to their flesh as being heavy of digestion, and to their juices as being moreor less prejudicial to health. Some say they are too rich, others of too heating a character. These objections are for the most part without foundation, as those who eat them can abundantly testify. To quote the authority of one or two medical friends on the Continent, formed on large personal experience, in favour of the excellence of this diet, Professors Puccinelli of Lucca, Briganti of Naples, Sanguinetti of Rome, Ottaviani of Urbino, Viviani of Genoa, are all consumers of funguses. Vittadini, whose excellent work on the esculent kinds of Italy is without a rival, himself eats, and gives us ample receipts for dressing them. In France, a similar service has been rendered to the public by Paulet, Persoon, Cordier, and Roques,[71]who have severally published excellent treatises on the various kinds fit for food, as they occur in the different provinces; whilst the influence of the last winter has been the means of introducing several new species into the Parisian markets, thus causing them to be very generally known. Not to multiply individual testimony needlessly, let that of Schwægrichen suffice, who tells us, that on seeing the peasants about Nuremberg eatingrawmushrooms,[72]he too, for several weeks, restricted himself entirely to this diet, “eating with them nothing but bread, and drinking nothing but water, when, instead of finding his health impaired, he rather experienced an increase of strength.”Vegetior evasit!as the inscription at Rome relates to have been the case withSt. John when he emerged, after one hour’s cooking, from a caldron of boiling oil. In a word, that which has been the daily bread of nations—the poor man’s manna—for many centuries, cannot be an unwholesome, much less a dangerous food.[73]Funguses, no doubt, are a rich and dainty fare; and so whatever objections apply to made-dishesin generemay apply also to these, which, while they contain all the sapid and nutritious constituents of animal food, have however an advantage over it—viz. that while they are as rich in gravy as any butcher’s meat, their texture is more tender, and their specific gravity less. Touching the general question as to the wholesomeness of made-dishes, it might perhaps be stated as a rule, to which there are many exceptions, that the more we vary and combine food, the better chance there is of our digesting it.[74]“You must assist nature,” Hippocrates says,“by art. You must vary your viands and your drinks. Music would tire if it were always to the same tune, so also does a monotonous regimen tire.[75]Cooks therefore makemixeddishes, and he who should always make the same dish would deservedly pass for not being a cook at all.”[76]And though Sydenham, in apparent discordance with this, recommendsonedish for dinner, it is quite for another reason. Plain food may indeed suit some stomachs, but good cooking suits all stomachs; and when Seneca writes, that “there are as many diseases as cooks,” Roques takes him up properly by replying, “Yes; as bad cooks.” The rule for every dinner, plain or compound, is to dress it well—“that which is best administered is best;” and good cooking, thus understood as the art of improving and of making the most of a thing, is a matter of equal importance to both rich and poor. It is a safe rule, I believe, and one recommended on good authority too, if men wanted authority on such matter, to eat what they like, but not as much of it as they like.[77]Nine-tenths ofdyspeptics become so from overfeeding. “Nauseosa satietas non ex crassis et pravis solum, sed etiam boni succi alimentis provenit.” Even Paracelsus, though an undoubted quack, might give some people a hint: “Dosis sola facit ut venenum sit vel non; cibus enim vel potus qualibet quantitate majore æquo assumtus venenum fit.” Dyspeptics are willing to enlist your sympathies in their behalf by telling of the delicacy of their mucous membrane, just as young countesses descant with more success on the extreme susceptibility of their nerves; nor is it always kindly received, if a well-wisher should remind them that their sufferings may not after all have been the fault either of their stomach or of the dish which they blame, but of their own indiscreet use of both. Whilst it is an acknowledged fact on all hands that infants are overfed, and that all children overfeed, men are by no means so prone or willing to admit that gluttony is perhaps the very last of childish things that they are in the habit of putting away from them. Thus, then, though funguses are not to be considered unwholesome, they are, like other good things, to be eaten with discretion and notà discrétion. “If you live an indolent life, are a sybarite in your heart, or should some violent passions (choler, jealousy, or revenge) be dealing with you, take care in such a case how you eat ragouts of truffles or of mushrooms; but if, on the contrary, your health be good, your life temperately prudent, yourtemper even, and your mind serene, then (provided you like them) you may eat of these luxuries without the slightest apprehension of their disagreeing with you.” M. Roques adds, and with truth, “it is the wine, surcharged with alcohol, of which men drink largely, in order, as they say, to relish and digest their mushrooms and made-dishes, that disagrees with the stomach, and that will, ere long, produce those visceral obstructions, and those nephritic ailments, at once so grievous to bear and so difficult to get rid of.”[78]If the reader shall retainoneword of the following homely lines, and that word the last, so as to remember it in place, he will owe us no fee, and it will save him many a bitter draught:—
Lies the last meal all undigested still?Does chyle impure your poisoned lacteals fill?Does Gastrodynia’s tiny gimlet bore,Where the crude load obstructs the rigid door?Or does the fiery heartburn flay your throat?Do darkling specks before your eyeballs float?Do fancied sounds invade your startled ear?Does the stopt heart oft wake to pulseless fear?Your days all listless, and your nights all dream,Of Pustule, Ecchymose, and Emphyseme;Till ruthless surgeon shall your paunch explore,And mark each spot with mischief mottled o’er;Does all you suffer quite surpass belief?Has oft-tried soda ceased to give relief?Has bismuth failed, nor tonics eased your pain?Have Chambers, Watson, both been teased in vain?In case so cross—what cure?—but one:Refrain!
Lies the last meal all undigested still?Does chyle impure your poisoned lacteals fill?Does Gastrodynia’s tiny gimlet bore,Where the crude load obstructs the rigid door?Or does the fiery heartburn flay your throat?Do darkling specks before your eyeballs float?Do fancied sounds invade your startled ear?Does the stopt heart oft wake to pulseless fear?Your days all listless, and your nights all dream,Of Pustule, Ecchymose, and Emphyseme;Till ruthless surgeon shall your paunch explore,And mark each spot with mischief mottled o’er;Does all you suffer quite surpass belief?Has oft-tried soda ceased to give relief?Has bismuth failed, nor tonics eased your pain?Have Chambers, Watson, both been teased in vain?In case so cross—what cure?—but one:Refrain!
Lies the last meal all undigested still?Does chyle impure your poisoned lacteals fill?Does Gastrodynia’s tiny gimlet bore,Where the crude load obstructs the rigid door?Or does the fiery heartburn flay your throat?Do darkling specks before your eyeballs float?Do fancied sounds invade your startled ear?Does the stopt heart oft wake to pulseless fear?Your days all listless, and your nights all dream,Of Pustule, Ecchymose, and Emphyseme;Till ruthless surgeon shall your paunch explore,And mark each spot with mischief mottled o’er;Does all you suffer quite surpass belief?Has oft-tried soda ceased to give relief?Has bismuth failed, nor tonics eased your pain?Have Chambers, Watson, both been teased in vain?In case so cross—what cure?—but one:Refrain!
Lies the last meal all undigested still?
Does chyle impure your poisoned lacteals fill?
Does Gastrodynia’s tiny gimlet bore,
Where the crude load obstructs the rigid door?
Or does the fiery heartburn flay your throat?
Do darkling specks before your eyeballs float?
Do fancied sounds invade your startled ear?
Does the stopt heart oft wake to pulseless fear?
Your days all listless, and your nights all dream,
Of Pustule, Ecchymose, and Emphyseme;
Till ruthless surgeon shall your paunch explore,
And mark each spot with mischief mottled o’er;
Does all you suffer quite surpass belief?
Has oft-tried soda ceased to give relief?
Has bismuth failed, nor tonics eased your pain?
Have Chambers, Watson, both been teased in vain?
In case so cross—what cure?—but one:Refrain!
But the objection against funguses is generally of another kind: many persons who like good living too well to be afraid of the new introduction of a luxury which is to bring new dyspepsias for them in consequence, fear lest, whilst indulging in this “celestial manna,” this βρῶμα θεῶν, they shouldmeet with the fate of the Emperor Claudius, and prefer remainingvivito the chance of becomingdivibefore their time. Now there is really no just ground for this fear; the esculent fungus never becomes poisonous, nor, conversely, the poisonous variety fit to eat. In Claudius’s particular case we must remember that Locusta medicated, and Agrippina cooked, that celebrated dish, in which the mushrooms, after all, were but the vehicle for the poison. As to the general fact, though cultivation undoubtedly produces considerable changes in the qualities of this, as in those of other classes of plants, they are never of such a kind as to convert that which is esculent in one locality into a dangerous food in another. “Cœlum non animum mutat;” οὐ γὰρ τὸν τρόπον ἀλλὰ τὸν τόπον μόνον μετήλλαξα.[79]That the mushroom is not quite so wholesome when cultivated as it is in the meadow,[80]in a state of nature, cannot be doubted;[81]and that many persons have suffered, both in France and England, more or less gastric disturbance after eating those taken from hotbeds or from dark foul unaerated places, is certain; that mushrooms also in decay, when chemistry has laid hold of their tissues and changed their juices, have produced disagreeable sensations in the stomach and bowels, is not to be questioned; finally, that the idiosyncrasy of some persons is opposed to this diet, as that of others is to shell-fish, to melons, cucumbers, and the like, must also be ceded: but none of these admissions surely meddle with the question, nor go any way towards proving the assumed fact, viz. that a mushroom ever changes its natureand becomes poisonous like the toadstool.[82]It has been unwarily asserted, that because the people of the north are in the habit of employing in their kitchen theAgaricus muscarius, which is known to be poisonous in the south, this points to some remarkable difference in the plant depending on difference of locality. It is to be recollected, however, that this very same fungus, if taken in sufficient quantity, without the precaution usually adopted of soaking it in vinegar before cooking,hasproduced fatal accidents, of which we read the recitals in various mycological works; and only not more frequently because the plant, being generally well steeped in brine or acetic acid, is in most cases robbed of deleterious principles, the only residue left being pure fungine, which is equally innoxious and the same in all funguses whatever. It is moreover worthy of remark, that though the common mushroom (Ag. campestris) varies considerably both as to flavour and wholesomeness (circumstances attributable in part to the varieties of soil in which it flourishes[83]), other funguses, on the contrary, being mostly restricted for their alimentation and reproduction to some one particular habitat, do not present such differences. TheBoletus edulis, theFistulina hepatica, theAgaricus oreades, theAg. procerus, theAg. prunulus, theAg. fusipes, theCantharellus cibarius, etc., are, in flavour and other sensible qualities, just the same in England as they are in France, Switzerland, or Italy. Thus theobjection to eat funguses on the ground of their presenting differences depending on those of the locality where they grow, applies principally, if it applies at all, to the English mushroom, of which no housekeeper is afraid, and by no means to those species the introduction of which into our markets and kitchens forms the main object of this treatise.
Besides the foregoing objections to funguses on the general ground of their supposed indigestibility, or else the more particular one of their not being at all times and in all places the same, a further and weightier one, as it is commonly urged, is the alleged impossibility of our being able to discriminate, with certainty, the good from the bad; an objection which derives much of its supposed weight from the apparently clashing testimonies of authors respecting the same species, who not unfrequently describe, under acommonname, a fungus which some of them assert to be esculent, some doubtful, and others altogether poisonous in its qualities. Such discrepancies, however, have already in many cases been satisfactorily adjusted, whilst a more minute attention and corresponding improvement in the pictorial representation of species is daily diminishing the errors of the older mycologists.
Admitting then, what there is no gainsaying, the existence of many dangerous individuals in this family,[84]ought we not, in a matter of such importance, rather to apply ourselves to the task of discriminating them accurately[85]than permit idlerumours of its impracticability, or even its real difficulty, to dehort us from the undertaking? Assuredly nature, who has given to brutes an instinct, by which to select their aliment, has not left man without a discriminative power to do the same with equal certainty; nor does he use his privileges to their full, or employ his senses as he might, when he suffers himself to be surpassed by brute animals in their diagnosis of food.
The first thing to know about funguses is, that in theimmense majority of casesthey are harmless; the innoxious and esculent kinds are therule, the poisonous theexceptionsto it; in a general way, it is more easy to say what we should not eat than what we may; we should never eat any that smell sickly or poisonous. Opinions respecting the agreeableness or disagreeableness of an odour, as of a taste, may differ; thus, in France and Italy (where the palate seems to us to bribe the judgment of the nose), it is usual to speak of that of theAg. prunulusas “perfuming the air;”[86]but though the strong peculiar smell exhaled by this and some other esculent funguses is anything but a perfume, as we apprehend the term, it is very different from that intolerable fœtor, that nauseous overwhelming odour given out by thePhallus impudicus, theClathrus cancellatus, theAmanita verna, and its varieties. There are some indeed which, yielding no smell, will poison notwithstanding; but then there are none to lure us into a false security by a deceitful fragrance. The same negative indications are furnished by the palate as by the nose; those that are bitter, or styptic, or that burn the fauces on mastication, or that parch the throat when they have beenswallowed, should be put aside; those that yield spiced milk, of whatever colour, should be held, notwithstanding exceptions, in suspicion, as an unsafe dairy to deal with. The “Lucchese Goat” (Ag. piperatus) and the “Cow of the Vosges” (Ag. lactifluus aureus), though in high request in their respective localities, and really delicate themselves, are akin to others whose milks, though they may have the colour of gold, have the qualities of gamboge.