Page:Foods and their adulteration; origin, manufacture, and composition of food products; description of common adulterations, food standards, and national food laws and regulations (IA foodstheiradulte02wile).pdf/476

 cup' a sure sign that the fungus is poisonous, for Amanita cæsarea has this cup. For the beginner, however, there are certain general rules, which, if carefully followed, will enable him to avoid the poisonous ones, while at the same time necessarily excluding many edible ones.

"1st.—Reject all fungi which have begun to decay, or which are infested with larvæ.

"2d.—Reject all fungi when in the button stage, since the characters are not yet shown which enable one to distinguish the genera and species. Buttons in pasture lands which are at the surface of the ground, and not deep-*seated in the soil, would very likely not belong to any of the very poisonous kinds.

"3d.—Reject all fungi which have a cup or sac-like envelope at the base of the stem, or which have a scaly or closely fitting layer at the base of the stem and rather loose warts on the pileus, especially if the gills are white. Amanita cæsarea, however, has a sac-like envelope at the base of the stem and yellow gills as well as a yellow cap, and is edible. Amanita rubescens has remnants of a scaly envelope on the base of the stem and loose warts on the cap, and the flesh, where wounded, becomes reddish. It is edible.

"4th.—Reject all fungi with a milky juice unless the juice is reddish. Several species with copious white milk, sweet or mild to the taste, are edible.

"5th.—Reject very brittle fungi with gills nearly all of equal length where the flesh of the cap is thin, especially those with bright caps.

"6th.—Reject all Boleti in which the flesh changes color where bruised or cut, or those in which the tubes have reddish mouths, also those the taste of which is bitter. Strobilomyces strobilaceus (Scop.) Berk. changes color when cut, and is edible.

"7th.—Reject fungi which have a cobwebby veil or ring when young, and those with slimy caps and clay-colored spores.

"In addition, proceed cautiously in all cases, and make it a point to become very familiar with a few species first, and gradually extend the range of species rather than attempt the first season to eat a large number of different kinds. All puff-balls are edible so long as they are white inside, though some are better than others. All coral-like or club fungi are edible."

Popular Distinction between Toadstools and Mushrooms.—There is a general opinion that the toadstool is poisonous and the mushroom is not. There is, however, no scientific distinction between the two kinds of fungi, popularly known as toadstools and mushrooms. The distinction is purely an arbitrary one. The small toadstools are often as delicious and as harmless as the small mushroom. The small mushroom, on the other hand, may be as deadly and as undesirable as the worst specimen of toadstool. There is danger especially to two classes of people in the discrimination between the poisonous and edible varieties of mushrooms and toadstools. The first class is com-