Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/106

96 skin is filled with a substance, white, yellowish, purple, or black. If old, the contents are discharged in dust at a smart squeeze. It is a Puff-ball.

As the object of this article is to interest those having no knowledge whatever of the subject, I shall not allude to other families. It is probable that your toadstool will come within one of these four grand divisions. If not, select another at once.

The puff-balls are the safest mushrooms for the beginner. When you find one, with a smooth skin, perfectly white inside, it is the giant puff-ball (Lycoperdum giganteum) in an infantile state. The color of the skin varies from pure white to a shade almost black. If the knife leaves a stain of yellow, it is too old to eat. Otherwise, you may eat it without fear. There are several smaller varieties, which my wife and I eat indiscriminately.

I believe all white puff-balls may be safely used if cooked at once. They change very rapidly after gathering, and should only be eaten in their freshest state. There is no poisonous fungus resembling them.

The teeth-bearing toadstools are also safe fungi for the experiments of the amateur. I have found only one variety, but Smith says all the species of any size enjoy a good character. The spreading hydnum (Hydnum repandum) is usually yellow, sometimes reddish, always firm-fleshed; stem deformed, indistinct, or eccentric; and one side of the disk, or top, is frequently much higher than the point diametrically opposite. The peculiarity of the teeth, or spines (which in young specimens easily rub off), is enough to distinguish it.

The Boleti can only be confounded with their twin brothers, the Polyporei. The latter grow mostly on wood, with abortive stems, while the boletus of the edible kind grows from the ground, has a distinct stem, and the tubes of the sponge are easily separable from each other. If these tubes or pores are brown, yellowish, or greenish, the top being russet-color, or any shade of brown, and on cutting the flesh it remains white, it is an edible, or at least a harmless, variety. If the plant is brilliant-colored, red or yellow, or turns blue when bruised, it is best to reject it. If the tubes are red at the orifice, it is doubtless poisonous.

The Agaricini (those with gills) cannot be thus generalized, and I regard them as the least safe for the amateur, although it is to this class that the celebrated individual honored by English-speaking people with the title of "a mushroom" belongs. How can I describe this species, it varies so widely with its circumstances?

Two varieties, the meadow-mushroom (Agaricus campestris) and the horse-mushroom (Agaricus arvensis), run into each other by intermediate types so closely that professional cooks and gardeners may be forgiven that they entirely ignore any difference between them. There is a theory that the horse-mushroom is propagated from spores