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/478

 as the entire list absolutely omits the only one test by which danger is to be avoided, it is a seven days' wonder that the grewsome toadstool epitaph is not more frequent."

The following tests are regarded as favorable by Gibson:

1. Avoid every mushroom having a cup or suggestion of such, at base; the distinctly fatal poisons are thus excluded.

2. Exclude those having an unpleasant odor, a peppery, bitter, or other unpalatable flavor, or tough consistency.

3. Exclude those infested with worms or in advanced age or decay.

4. In testing others which will pass the above probation let the specimen be kept by itself, not in contact with or enclosed in the same basket with other species.

Begin by a mere nibble, the size of a pea, and gentle mastication, being careful to swallow no saliva, and finally expelling all from the mouth. If no noticeable results follow, the next trial, with the interval of a day, with the same quantity may permit of a swallow of a little of the juice, the fragments of the fungus expelled as before. No unpleasantness following for twenty-four hours, the third trial may permit of a similar entire fragment being swallowed, all of these experiments to be made on an empty stomach. If this introduction of the actual substance of the fungus into the stomach is succeeded by no disturbance in twenty-four hours, a larger piece, the size of a hazelnut, may be attempted, and thus the amount gradually increased day by day until the demonstration of edibility, or at least harmlessness, is complete and the species thus admitted into the "safe" list. By following this method with the utmost caution the experimenter can at best suffer but a slight temporary indisposition as the result of his hardihood, in the event of a noxious species having been encountered, and will at least thus have the satisfaction of discovery of an enemy if not a friend.

It may be said that any mushroom, omitting the Amanita, which is pleasant to the taste and otherwise agreeable as to odor and texture when raw, is probably harmless and may safely be thus ventured on with a view of establishing its edibility. A prominent author on our edible mushrooms (McIlvaine) applies this rule to all the Agarics with confidence. "This rule may be established," he says: "All Agarics—excepting the Amanitæ—mild to the taste when raw, if they commend themselves in other ways, are edible." This claim is borne out in his experience, with the result that he now numbers over one hundred species among his habitual edible list out of the three hundred which he has actually found by personal test to be edible or harmless. "So numerous are toadstools," he continues, "and so well does a study of them define their habits and habitats, that the writer never fails upon any day from April to December to find ample supply of healthy, nutritious, delicate toadstools for himself and family."