No country is perhaps richer in esculent Funguses than our own; we have upwards of thirty species abounding in our woods. No markets might therefore be better supplied than the English, and yet England is the only country in Europe where this important and savoury food is, from ignorance or prejudice, left to perish ungathered.

In France, Germany, and Italy, Funguses not only constitute for weeks together the sole diet of thousands, but the residue, either fresh, dried, or variously preserved in oil, vinegar, or brine, is sold by the poor, and forms a valuable source of income to many who have no other produce to bring into the market. Well, then, may we style them, with M. Roques, “the manna of the poor.” To call attention to an article of commerce elsewhere so lucrative, with us so wholly neglected, is the object of the present work, to which the best possible introduction will be a brief reference to the state of the fungus market abroad.

The following brief summary was drawn up by Professor Sanguinetti, the Official Inspector (“Ispettore dei Funghi”) at Rome; let it speak for itself:—“For forty days during the autumn, and for about half that period every spring, large quantities of Funguses, picked in the immediate vicinity of Rome, from Frascati, Rocca di Papa, Albano, beyond Monte Mario towards Ostia and the neighbourhood of the sites of Veii and Gabii, are brought in at the different gates. In the year 1837, the Government instituted the so-called Congregazione Speciale di SanitÀ, which, among other duties, was more particularly required to take into serious consideration the commerce of Funguses, from the unrestricted sale of which during some years past, cases of poisoning had not unfrequently occurred. The following decisions were arrived at by this body:—

“As all fresh Funguses for sale in quantities exceeding ten pounds are weighed, in order to be taxed, we are enabled to arrive at an exact estimate of the number of pounds thus disposed of. The return of taxed Mushrooms in the city of Rome during the last ten years, gives a yearly average of between sixty and eighty thousand pounds weight; and if we double this amount, as we may safely do, in order to include such smaller untaxed supplies as are disposed of as bribes, fees, and presents, and reckon the whole at the rate of six baiocchi, or threepence per pound (a fair average), this will make the commercial value of fresh Funguses very apparent, showing it here to be little less than £2000 a year.”

But the fresh Funguses form only a small part of the whole consumption, to which must be added the dried, the pickled, and the preserved; which sell at a much higher price than the first.[2] Supposing, however, that with these additions the supply of all kinds only reached a sum the double of that given above, even this would furnish us with an annual average of nearly four thousand pounds sterling; and this in a single city, and that, too, by no means the most populous one in Italy![3] What, then, must be the net receipts of all the market-places of all the Italian States? For as in these the proportion of the price of esculent Funguses to butchers’ meat is as two to three, it is plain that prejudice has deprived the poor of this country, not only of many thousand pounds of the former but also of as much of the latter, as might have been purchased by exchange, and of the countless sums which might have been earned in gathering them.[4]

ON THE ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND.