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THE

HOME FRIEND;

A WEEKLY MISCELLANY OF AMUSEMENT AND INSTRUCTION.

PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY,

BY THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE,

No. 12.]

AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.

[PRICE 1d.

A FEW WORDS ON THE MUSHROOM TRIBE.

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I NEVER make any lengthened stay in a house in the country, without feeling how great are the advantages of leisure which such a home affords. In farmhouses certainly, as well as in some others, the household are mostly occupied from morning till evening. In many country dwellings, however, there seems, from the absence of interruptions, from the early hours, the

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quiet and the sunshine, a kind of holiday life, which is soothing and delightful to those whose ordinary home is amid the cares, and business, and visitings, and distractions of a city. But if such a home is to be made favourable either to improvement or enjoyment, the long hours of leisure must be well employed. A great physiologist has told us how often in the upper and middle classes of society the health and spirits suffer and are finally lost for want of some pursuit, some object in life which may be earnestly followed. He has told that nervous and other maladies beset some whose chief business in the day is to complete the netting of a purse; and we, when looking at the performances of young ladies in Berlin wool, have, sometimes, as the rich crimson tint met the eye, thought of the playful remark of one who said that such embroideries were stained with the blood of murdered Time. We would not depreciate these feminine pursuits, they are truly valuable as means of recreation; and we have sometimes smiled at hearing some of the other sex undervalue them, when we have known that these works of art have been wrought during the very hours in which they themselves were doing nothing. Women can happily work while they converse, and thus Time, precious Time, may often be well occupied in these things. But all earnest thoughtful persons need something higher than this to interest them-something which demands greater thought, and has a more important purpose. Most of all do those who live in the country need it, for they are deprived of those various means of intellectual activity which, even in a provincial town, are in constant operation, and which, by gathering many intelligent persons together, aid materially in mental improvement.

To those who live in the country, we would most earnestly recommend the study of some department of natural history. Trees are waving, flowers are blooming, birds are singing, and insects are revelling around them. The very pebbles in their pathway have a history of the past within them; the stream which is flowing by them has its shell-fish and zoophytes most wonderfully adapted to their element, most singularly constructed for life and nutrition. God made them all, and pronounced them good, and we need only to examine them to find how worthy they are of the praise of the Creator.

There is something very soothing to the mind in the study of nature, and so happily does it influence the thoughts, that Priest declares, that in all his extensive practice among the insane, he never met with one who was a naturalist. There are many branches of natural history, too, which immediately affect our physical comfort and welfare, and may be made subservient to domestic uses. A good botanist could point out to the poor in his neighbourhood, many roots and other portions of various plants, which could be used during a season of scarcity; and might dissuade from the medicinal uses of some of those "simples," administered in villages, which are positively hurtful, and often highly dangerous to the invalid when given without an accurate knowledge of disease. Southey mentions that his aunt, Miss Tyler, once effected a wholesome and curious innovation in the poor-house, by persuading the inmates to use beds stuffed with beech-leaves, according to a practice in some parts of France; and whatever may be the knowledge which we gain for ourselves, we may, if benevolently disposed, render it available to the good of others.

Any one who had leisure to bestow a careful and patient attention on the plants of the mushroom tribe, might find in these wonderful and beautiful objects a great source of interest, and might also be serviceable to the

neighbourhood in which he resided by imparting his knowledge. Owing to the ignorance and prejudice which at present prevail in this country respecting this tribe of plants, an immense amount of food is annually wasted, and a large source of employment is lost to the poor. Dr. Badham, in his valuable work on the Esculent Funguses of Britain, remarks, "I have this autumn, myself, witnessed whole hundredweights of rich wholesome diet rotting under trees; woods teeming with food, and not one hand to gather it; and this perhaps, in the midst of potato blights, poverty, and all manner of privations, and public prayers against imminent famine. I have indeed grieved when I have considered the straitened condition of the lower orders this year, to see pounds innumerable of extempore beefsteaks growing on our oaks in the shape of Fistulina hepatica; Agaricus fusipes to pickle in clusters under them; Puff-balls, which some of our friends have not inaptly compared to sweet-bread, for the rich delicacy of their unassisted flavour; Hydna as good as oysters, which they somewhat resemble in taste; Agaricus deliciosus, reminding us of tender lamb

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FISTULINA HEPATICA.

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kidney; the beautiful Yellow Chanterelle, that kalon Kagothon of diet, growing by the bushel, and no basket but our own to pick up a few specimens in our way; the sweet nutty-flavoured Boletus, in vain calling himself edulis, where there was none to believe him; the dainty Orcella, the Agaricus heterophyllus, which tastes like the craw-fish when grilled; the red and green species of Agaricus to cook in any way, and equally good

in all."

The reader unacquainted with the subject will be surprised to learn the value of funguses as a marketable commodity in some of the countries of

Europe. In Rome alone, so great is the consumption of this kind of vegetable diet, that not less than 140,000 pounds weight are annually used there as food, and their worth is estimated at 4,000l. sterling, and this in a population of 156,000 persons. The funguses of Great Britain are not less fitted for diet than those of Italy, and Dr. Badham thinks it likely that no country is richer than our own in esculent species, upwards of thirty of these abounding in our woods. Were they eaten as they might be, we might indeed with Mons. Roques, call them "the manna of the poor."

In Rome, an officer appointed by the government is called the Inspector of the Funguses, and it is his business to examine all those brought into the city from its vicinity. He is also empowered to fine or imprison any mushroom-gatherer who refuses to submit his plants to his inspection. Not only is it his duty to see that the plants are of wholesome species, but if he detects any stale mushrooms in the baskets, he immediately orders them to be thrown into the Tiber, their freshness being an important condition of their wholesomeness.

But our readers will say that Toadstools and various noxious kinds of fungus, are so similar to the edible mushrooms, as to render any ignorance in the matter highly dangerous in using them. We are not urging a slight acquaintance with the tribe, but a careful study of them: still the idea of danger connected with them is greatly exaggerated. In the immense majority of cases our mushroom plants are harmless. "The innoxious and esculent kinds," says Dr. Badham, “are the rule; the poisonous, the exception to it." "We take," he says, 66 our potatoes for the table out of the deadly family of the Solana; we select the garden from the fool's parsley; and we do not hesitate to pickle gherkins, notwithstanding their affinity to the squirting cucumber, which would poison us if we were to eat it." The eatable species are all clearly described, and in the work to which we refer, are also so well figured, as that they may be distinctly recognised. Nor is it a little remarkable that that frequent species of the fungus tribe, the common mushroom (Agaricus campestris), the Pratiola of the Italians, which we fearlessly purchase from the villager for ketchup, and other culinary uses, is almost the only one condemned by the Roman Inspector to be thrown into the Tiber. Here every woman in the village would think herself competent to decide on the species; "whilst," says our author, “many hundred baskets of what we call toad-stools are carried home for the table, this species is held in such dread, that no one knowingly will touch it. 'It is reckoned one of their fiercest imprecations,' writes Professor Sanguinetti, amongst our lower orders, infamous for the horrible nature of their oaths, to pray that one may die of a Pratiola."" Yet in our country, notwithstanding its general use, an accident rarely occurs from any mistake in the species, notwithstanding its variety of form and general appearance; and far less discrimination would be required to identify several other species than this; for many are so obviously different from all others, that it would be impossible to confound one with another.

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The exquisite beauty both of form and colour exhibited by some of the larger mushrooms might, independently of any other consideration, render this tribe worthy our attention. Some of them have hues like those of the peacock's tail, others are of richest violet, or most delicate lilac, or green, or yellow, or orange, or scarlet, or buff, or white, and polished as the finest ivory. And what delightful scenes and tones of nature present themselves to those who walk abroad, with eye and heart open to its influences, and with an ear awakened to its rich and varied melodies! What music is whispered

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by leaves and streams in field or wood! what vistas of beauty lie among the far-off purple hills! how many wild flowers give us their odours, and bend to the wind in attitudes of grace, and preach a lesson to the heart, of the care of Him who formed them! The very toad-stools, as we call them, have colours richer even than those of the flowers, and we need not fear to find them the resting-places of the bloated reptile to which their name refers. Dr. Badham, however, mentions that an anonymous Italian author, asserts that in Germany toads have been actually seen sitting on their stools; but, as the Doctor humorously remarks, even in Germany it must be admitted that they do not use them as frequently as we might expect, had they been created for this end. Spenser, in his Faëry Queen, takes the name as significant

"The grisly todestool grown there might you see,
And loathed paddocks lording o'er the same."

The name of paddock* for toads is still in common use in the North of England and in Scotland.

"In that most grisly and ghastly wax-work exhibition at Florence," says the Doctor, "representing a charnel-house filled with the recent victims

* "Paddock calls-Anon: Anon:"-SHAKSPEARE.

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