Page:Scouting for girls, adapted from Girl guiding.djvu/124

110 are in camp some of them may come in very useful, whereas others which look tempting to eat may cause you a great deal of trouble and illness.

Eatable Plants But especially you ought to know what kind of plants are useful to you in providing you with food. Supposing you were out in a jungle without any food, as very often happens; if you knew nothing about plants you would probably die of starvation, or of poisoning, from not knowing which fruit or roots were wholesome and which dangerous to eat.

There are numbers of berries, nuts, roots, barks, and leaves that are good to eat.

The same with crops of different kinds of corn and seed, vegetable roots, and even grasses and vetches. Seaweed is much eaten in Ireland and Scotland. Such as laver, sloke, dulse, ulva, etc.

No less than fifteen kinds of fungi (that's the plural of fungus!), or mushrooms, are good to eat if you can only tell them from the poisonous kinds.

Dandelions, nettles, rose berries, bracken roots, lime buds, and many other common plants make useful foods.

But you have to know which is which when you see them, and then know how to cook or prepare them.

Woodland cooking is great fun when you care to do it.

Nature Study in Towns

Many people seem to think that you cannot get Nature study unless you are out in the fields or woods studying