By R. TURNER.

THE LARGER FUNGI.

To become acquainted with the bulkier of these villains, we must visit their favorite haunts. An occasional one may occur in any kind of place, as has already been explained. A good many, especially of the edible sort, and notably the common mushroom, grow in open pastures. To get among crowds of them, however, we must resort to close woods, especially of fir and pine. There they grow on tree-stumps, fallen trunks, and on the ground, in great variety and abundance. If we go at the proper season their profusion will astonish us. This time of plenty varies from early to late autumn with the character of the weather. Clad in waterproof wraps and with leather gloves on hand, we may make a fungus foray into the dripping woods amid russet and falling leaves with comparative comfort; and even on a “raw rheumatic day” there will likely be much enjoyment for us and still more instruction. It will be strange, indeed, if we do not find some kinds to eat and very many to think over. We ought to get examples, at least, of nearly all the different families. Let us consider them in a general way as novices do. A host of them have gills like the mushroom; and so we may take that best known of them all as a type of the whole class. Mushroom spawn runs through the soil in a rootlike way, absorbing the organic matter it falls in with and every here and there swelling out into roundish bodies, each consisting of a tubercle enclosed in a wrapper. The tubercle bursts through the wrapper as growth goes on, and soon above ground appears the well-known form of the mushroom, with a stalk supporting a fleshy head by the center, and on the under surface of this head radiating gills, which are at first covered by a veil that finally gives way and leaves only a ring round the stem. These gills are originally flesh-colored, but afterward become brown and mottled with numerous minute purple spores. If we were to investigate further by means of the microscope, we should find that the spores are not contained in any case, and that they are produced in fours on little points at the tips of special cells. Of the other kinds belonging to this order of agarics, some differ from the mushroom in being poisonous and others in being parasitic. There is much variety, also, in the tints of gill and spore, different kinds having these white, pink, rosy, salmon-colored, reddish, or yellowish, or darkish brown, purple or black. Again, in some the stem is not central, but attached more or less laterally to the head; in others there is no stem, and the gills radiate out from the substance on which the agaric grows. The ring round the stalk, too, often varies, or is sometimes wanting. There are many other differences, and it is by these that we are able to distinguish the one kind from the other: but, of course, little more can be done here than merely to indicate this infinite variety. Dr. Badham, in his admirable work on the “Esculent Funguses of England,” puts this quaintly, as he does many other facts. “These are stilted upon a high leg, and those have not a leg to stand on; some are shell-shaped, many bell-shaped; and some hang upon their stalks like a lawyer’s wig.”

These gill-bearers, are, however, but one order in this extensive division of plants. Nature’s plastic hand is never weary of shaping fresh forms. It is lavish of variety, and never works in a stinted or makeshift way. In place of gills we find in another order tubes or pores in which the spores are produced. These tubular kinds are sometimes fleshy, as in the edible boletus, or woody, as in the polypores, popularly called sap-balls, which every one who knows anything about woods and their wonders must have seen on old tree-stumps, often growing to a great size. In yet another order, spines, or bristles, or teeth, take the place of gills and tubes. In the puff-balls the spores ripen inside a roundish leathern case, which afterward bursts and discharges them as a fine dust. Then there is an extensive class in which the spores are not produced in this offhand way at all, but are carefully enclosed in little cases, or rather, I should say, loaded into microscopic guns, as in the pezizas; and very beautiful objects these are under the microscope.

Poisonous, putrescent, strange in shape, or color, or odor, as many of the larger fungi are, it is little to be wondered at that contempt has been a common human feeling with respect to most of them, and a crush with disdainful heel on occasion the lot of a good many. The popular loathing has run out into language. Under the opprobrious term “toadstool,” a whole host of kinds is commonly included. The puff-balls are known in Scotland as “de’il’s sneeshin’-mills” (devil’s snuff-boxes), an epithet which expresses with a certain imaginative humor, and a dash of superstition, the idea of something so utterly base that it ministers to the gratification of demons, tickling their olfactory organs with satanic satisfaction. Indeed, in this country the mushroom is almost the only favored exception to the popular verdict of loathing. It has gained the hearts of the people through their stomachs, and ketchup has overcome popular prejudice by its fine flavor. But there are many others on which cultured palates dote. Truffles are dear delicacies, which few but rich men taste, for fine aroma and flavor command a high price. The Scotch-bonnets of the fairy rings, besides possessing a certain bouquet of elfin romance, cook into delicacies full of stomachic delight. Then there are chantarells and morels and blewitts, and poor-men’s-beef-steaks, over which trained appetites rejoice. A score of dainty little rogues at least there are, and a still greater number of kinds that are nutritive and fairly palatable. In some European countries the edible ones are a really valuable addition to the food of the people—not from being more plentiful than with us, but from being more eagerly gathered and diligently cultivated. One sort or other is used as food by every tribe of men. Not only does the edible mushroom occur in all habitable lands, but in certain foreign parts—as in Australia—there are forms of it very much superior in quality to our English ones. Then, of course, every clime has its own peculiar edible kinds. The native bread of the Australians is an instance in point; it looks somewhat like compressed sago, and is a fairly good article of diet. The staple food of the wild Fuegians for several months each year is supplied by a kind which they gather in great abundance from the living twigs of the evergreen beech. Then there are some not very pleasant, according to our ideas, which can be safely used, and are thus available in times of scarcity, as, for instance, the gelatinous one which the New Zealand natives know as “thunder-dirt,” and one somewhat similar that the Chinese are said to utilize. A curious trade has of late years sprung up between New Zealand and China. A brown semi-transparent fungus, resembling the human ear, grows abundantly in the North Island. This the Maoris and others collect, dry, and pack into bags, for export to China, where it is highly prized for its flavor and gelatinous qualities as an ingredient in soup. It is a species nearly related to our Jew’s-ear. The value of this fungus exported from New Zealand in 1877 was stated at over £11,000.—Good Words.

A talent for any art is rare; but it is given to nearly every one to cultivate a taste for art; only it must be cultivated with earnestness. The more things thou learnest to know and enjoy, the more complete and full will be for thee the delight of living.—Platen.