Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/103

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DO not mean in this article to consider the origin, reproduction, nature, and extent of the family of Cryptogamous plants called Fungi; for I do not claim the culture of the scientist, or the disinterested enthusiasm of the naturalist. "Art for art's sake" is not my war-cry. I propose to detail in popular language the experiences of an amateur toadstool-eater who desires to encourage personal investigation of a neglected subject.

Not long since, a course of lectures was announced on "Fungi." My call for circulars and tickets revealed the fact that the lecturer proposed to explain all about smut in distinction from potato-rot; the difference between blue-mould, black-mould, and white-mould, was also to be clearly defined, for which purpose a microscope of wonderful power had been provided. It seemed to me that, after people were able to tell healthful food from certain poison, it would be in place to give them a popular course on microscopic organisms.

Three years ago, I was detaching a large fungus from the famous Liberty-Tree on Boston Common. An over-cautious stranger tapped my shoulder and said, "My friend, that is not a mushroom!"

"Now that looks to me like a big toadstool," exclaimed another by-stander.

"Every mushroom is a toadstool, and every toadstool is a mushroom," I replied, and I repeat the answer here. You might as well call a beet a "vegetable," and every other representative, from the garden a "plant," as to consider one fungus a "mushroom," and all others of a thousand species "toadstools."

Yet, people cannot be blamed for ignorance where there are so few sources of information. The difficulties experienced by the amateur can scarcely be overrated. Excepting the writings of Dr. Curtis, of South Carolina, I have not seen an original contribution to American literature on this obscure topic. Even Dr. Curtis (in a very interesting correspondence with Charles James Sprague, deposited at the rooms of the Boston Society of Natural History) gives little information regarding toadstools, devoting most of his letters to the revelations made by the microscope. I, however, procured from London the works whose titles I give in the note at the end of this paper, and began the study of fungology as a science.

Still, discrepancies and obscurities will confront the student. The descriptions are by no means exact. All these authorities describe fungi of foreign parts, i. e., not necessarily American species. The classification is not even harmonious, as the generic names of the different species vary with leading authorities, from the time of