Our Edible Toadstools and Mushrooms and How to Distinguish Them

Our Edible Toadstools and Mushrooms and How to Distinguish Them - A Selection of Thirty Native Food Varieties Easily Recognizable by their Marked Individualities, with Simple Rules for the Identification of Poisonous Species

A prominent botanical authority connected with one of our universities, upon learning of my intention of perpetrating a popular work on our edible mushrooms and toadstools, was inclined to take issue with me on the wisdom of such publication, giving as his reasons that, owing to the extreme difficulty of imparting exact scientific knowledge to the "general reader," such a work, in its presumably imperfect interpretation by the very individuals it is intended to benefit, would only result, in many instances, in supplanting the popular wholesome distrust of all mushrooms with a rash over-confidence which would tend to increase the labors of the family physician and the coroner. And, to a certain extent, in its appreciation of the difficulty of imparting exact science to the lay mind, his criticism was entirely reasonable, and would certainly apply to any treatise on edible mushrooms for popular circulation which contemplated a too extensive field, involving subtle botanical analysis and nice differentiation between species. [Pg 2] But when we realize the factnow generally concededthat most of the fatalities consequent upon mushroom-eating are directly traceable to one particular tempting group of fungi, and that this group is moreover so distinctly marked that a tyro could learn to distinguish it, might not such a popular work, in its emphasis by careful portraiture and pictorial analysis of this deadly genusplacarding it so clearly and unmistakably as to make it readily recognizablemight not such a work, to that extent at least, accomplish a public service? Moreover, even the most conservative mycologist will certainly admit that out of the hundred and fifty of our admittedly esculent species of fungi there might be segregated a few which bear such conspicuous characters of outward form and other unique individual featuressuch as color of spores, gills, and tubes, taste, odor, surface character, color of milky juice, etc.as to render them easily recognizable even by the "general reader." ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 46514
Author: Gibson, W. Hamilton (William Hamilton)
Release Date: Aug 5, 2014
Format: eBook
Language: English