The frequency of this terrible foe in all our woods, and the ever-recurring fatalities which are continually traced to its seductive treachery (some twenty-five deaths having been recorded in the public journals during the summer of 1893 alone), render it important that its teeth should be drawn, and its portrait placarded and popularly familiarized as an archenemy of mankind.

As we have seen, from every superficial standpoint, this species is self-commendatory. It is, without doubt, in comeliness, symmetry, and structure, the ideal of all our mushrooms, as it is, indeed, the botanical type of the tribe Agaricus, as well as its most notorious genus. Since the time of that carousing young lunatic Nero, who, doubtless, was wont to make merry with its "convenient poison," upon one occasion, it is recorded by Pliny, to the presumably amusing extinction of the entire guests of a banquet, together with the prefect of the guard and a small host of tribunes and centurions, the Amanita has claimed an army of victims.

While giving no superficial token of its dangerous character to the casual observer, the Amanita, as a genus and a species, is nevertheless easily identified, if the mushroom collector will for the moment consider it from the botanical rather than the sensuous or gustatorial standpoint.

The deadly Amanita need no longer impose upon the fastidious feaster in the guise of the dainty "legume" of his menu, or as a contaminating, fatal ingredient in the otherwise wholesome ragoÛt.

In Plate 3 I have presented the reprobate Amanita vernus in its protean progressive proportions from infancy to maturity. This is especially desirable, in that the fungus is equally dangerous as an infant, and also because the development of its growth specially emphasizes botanically the one important structural character by which the species or genus may be easily distinguished. Let us, then, consider the specimen as a type of the tribe Agaricus (gilled mushroom, see p. 79), genus Amanita.

Year after year we are sure of finding this species, or others of the genus, especially in the spring and summer, its favorite haunt being the woods. Its spores, like other mushrooms, are shed upon the ground from the white gills beneath, as described in our chapter on "Spore-prints," or wafted to the ends of the earth on the breeze, and eventually, upon having found a suitable habitat, vegetate in the form of webby, white, mould-like growth—mycelium—which threads through the dead leaves, the earth, or decaying wood. This running growth is botanically considered as the true fungus, the final mushroom being the fruit, whose function is the dissemination of the spores. After a rain, or when the conditions are otherwise suitable, a certain point among this webby tangle beneath the ground becomes suddenly quickened into astonishing cell-making energy, and a small rounded nodule begins to form, which continues to develop with great rapidity (Plate 2). In a few hours more it has pushed its head above ground, and now appears like an egg, as at A, Plate 3. The successive stages in its development are clearly indicated in the drawings. Each represents an interval of an hour or two, or more, the most suggestive and important feature being the outer envelope, or volva, which encloses the actual mushroom—at first completely, then in a ruptured condition, until in the mature growth the only vestige of it which appears above ground are the few shreds generally, though not always, to be seen on the top of the cap. The most important character of this deadly Amanita is, therefore, apparently with almost artful malice prepense, often concealed from our view in the mature specimen, the only remnant of the original outer sack being the cup or socket about the base of the stem, which is generally hidden under ground, and usually there remains after we pluck the specimen.

Plate II.—MYCELIUM, AND EARLY VEGETATION OF A MUSHROOM

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This "poison-cup" may be taken as the cautionary symbol of the genus Amanita, common to all the species. Any mushroom or toadstool, therefore, whose stem is thus set in a socket, or which has any suggestion of such a socket, should be labelled "poison"; for, though some of the species having this cup are edible, from the popular point of view, it is wiser and certainly safer to condemn the entire group. But the cup must be sought for. We shall thus at least avoid the possible danger of a fatal termination to our amateur experiments in gustatory mycology; for, while various other mushrooms might, and do, induce even serious illness through digestive disturbance, and secondary, possibly fatal, complications, the Amanita group are now conceded to be the only fungi which contain a positive, active poisonous principle whose certain logical consequence is death.

Another structural feature of the Amanita is shown in the illustration, but has been omitted from the above consideration to avoid confusion. This is the "veil" which, in the young mushroom, originally connected the edge of the cap, or pileus, with the stem, and whose gradual rupture necessarily follows the expansion of the cap, until a mere frill or ring is left about the stem at the original point of contact.

But this feature is a frequent character in many edible mushrooms, as witness the several examples in the edible species of our plates, and therefore of no dangerous significance per se, being merely a membrane which protects the growing gills.

Plate III.—DEVELOPMENT OF AMANITA VERNUS

Nor are the other features, the remnants of the volva on the summit of the cap, to be considered of primary importance from the popular point of view, for the reason—firstly, that these fragments, while conspicuous and constant in Amanita muscarius (Plate 4), are not thus permanent in several other species of AmanitÆ, notably the white-satin-capped Amanita vernus, Amanita phalloides, and Amanita CÆsarea, in which the fragments are deciduous; and, secondly, because the same general effect of these warty scales is so clearly imitated in other mushrooms which are distinctly edible, as in examples Plate 10 and Plate 16. It is to the volva or cup, then, that we must devote our special attention as the only safe and constant character. And this leads me to the prominent and necessary consideration of another common species of Amanita, mentioned above, in which even this cup is more or less obscure.

THE POISONOUS FLY-MUSHROOM

Agaricus (Amanita) muscarius

This, one of the most strikingly beautiful of our toadstools, is figured in Plate 4. Its brilliant cap of yellow, orange, or even scarlet, studded with white or grayish raised spots, can hardly be unfamiliar to even the least observant country walker. Its favorite habitat is the woods, and, in the writer's experience especially, beneath hemlocks and poplars, where he has seen this species year after year in whole companies, and in all stages shown in the plate at the same time, from the globular young specimen almost covered with its white warts just lifting its head above the brown carpet to the fully expanded individual, in which the spots have assumed a shrunken and brownish tint.

The consideration of this species is of the utmost importance, as its beauty is but an alluring mask, which has enticed many to their destruction; among the more recent of its conspicuous victims having been the Czar Alexis of Russia. For this is another cosmopolitan type of mushroom, common alike in America, Great Britain, Europe, and Asia, in all of which countries it is notorious for its poisonous resources. It is commonly known as the "Fly-agaric," its substance macerated in milk having been employed for centuries as an effectual fly-poison. After the reader's introduction to the botanical character of the Amanita, he would, presumably, be somewhat suspicious of the present species. The suggestive white or dingy fragments upon its cap, it is true, would alone arouse his suspicions, but in the examination of the stem for the telltale volva or cup its verification might be somewhat in doubt. It is for this reason that the species is emphasized in these pages, as the Amanita muscarius, judging from the great dissimilarity of its numerous portraits from all countries, would seem to be remarkably protean, especially with reference to its stalk. The majority of the portraits of this reprobate presents the volva as distinct and as clean cut as in the A. vernus just described, and the stalk above as equally smooth, features which are usually at variance with the associated botanical description of the species, which often characterizes the volva as "incomplete" or "obscure," and the stem as "rough and scaly." If the portraits in these works are correct, the Amanita qualities of the species are clearly displayed, but if their accompanying descriptions are to be credited, and such seem to be in perfect accord with the specimens which I have always found, the A. muscarius would seem in need of a more authentic historian.

PLATE IV
FLY MUSHROOM

Agaricus (Amanita) muscarius

PLATE IV

Amanita Muscaria. (POISONOUS.)

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The example figured in the plate presents the stem and volva as they have always appeared in specimens obtained by the writer. In the young individuals the stem is waxy-white, becoming later a dull, pale ochre hue, the lower half being shaggy and torn, and beset with loose projecting woolly points which resolve themselves below into scales with loose tips curved outward, and so distantly disposed upon the bulbous base as to leave no marked definition of the continuous rim or opening of a cup. But the cup is there, and in a section of the bud state of the mushroom could have been seen, even as in the white warts upon the surface of the younger specimens we note the evidences of the upper portion of the same white volva. In many other species of Amanita, notably A. vernus, as already mentioned, these volva fragments generally wither and are shed from the cap. They are thus not to be counted on as a permanent token. But in the fly-mushroom they form a distinct character, as they adhere firmly to the smooth skin of the pileus, and in drying, instead of shrivelling and curling and falling off, simply shrink, turn brownish, and in the maturely expanded mushroom appear like scattered drops of mud which have dried upon the pileus. Another peculiar structural feature of this mushroom is shown in the sectional drawing herewith given. The shorter gills, instead of rounding off as they approach the pileus (see a), terminate abruptly almost at right angles to their edge. The contrast from the usual form will be more apparent by comparison with the section of the parasol-mushroom on page 114.

SECTION OF FLY-AMANITA

Few species of mushrooms have such an interesting history as this. Its deadly properties were known to the ancients. From the earliest times its deeds of notoriety are on record.

This is quite possibly the species alluded to by Pliny as "very conveniently adapted for poisoning," and is not improbably the mushroom referred to by this historian in the following quotation from his famous Natural History: "Mushrooms are a dainty food, but deservedly held in disesteem since the notorious crime committed by Agrippina, who through their agency poisoned her husband, the Emperor Claudius; and at the same moment, in the person of her son Nero, inflicted another poisonous curse upon the whole world, herself in particular."

Notwithstanding its fatal character, this mushroom, it is said, is habitually eaten by certain peoples, to whom the poison simply acts as an intoxicant. Indeed, it is customarily thus employed as a narcotic and an exhilarant in Kamchatka and Asiatic Russia generally, where the Amanita drunkard supplants the opium fiend and alcohol dipsomaniac of other countries. Its narcotizing qualities are commemorated by Cooke in his Seven Sisters of Sleep, wherein may be found a full description of the toxic employment of the fungus.

The writer has heard it claimed that this species of Amanita has been eaten with impunity by certain individuals; but the information has usually come from sources which warrant the belief that another harmless species has been confounded with it. The warning of my Frontispiece may safely be extended to the fly-amanita. Its beautiful gossamer veil may aptly symbolize a shroud.

By fixing these simple structural features of the Amanita in mind, and emphasizing them by a study of our Frontispiece, we may now consider ourselves armed against our greatest foe, and may with some assurance make our limited selection among this lavish larder of wild provender continually going to waste by the ton in our woods and pastures and lawns. For it is now a fact generally believed by fungologists, and being gradually demonstrated, that the edible species, far from being the exception, as formerly regarded, are the rule; that a great majority of our common wild fungi are at least harmless, if not positively wholesome and nutritious as food.

THE POISONOUS ALKALOID

The toxic and deadly effects of certain mushroom poisons, as already described, have been known since ancient times; and the prolonged intoxicating debauches to-day prevalent among the Amanita dipsomaniacs of Northern Russia and Kamchatka, consequent upon the allurements of the decoction of the fly-agaric, are well-known matters of history.

The true chemical character of this poison, however, was not discovered until 1868, when it was successfully isolated by chemical analyses of Drs. Vigier, Schmiedeberg, Currie, and Koppe, and ascertained to be an alkaloid principle, to which was given originally the name of bulbosine, since variously known as muscarine, and finally and most appropriately amanitine.

The poison thus identified, it was reserved to an American authority on edible fungi, Mr. Julius A. Palmer, of Boston, to discover the fact of its confinement to but one fungus family—the Amanita.

In the year 1879, in an article contributed by him to the Moniteur Scientifique, of Paris, he states:

"Mushrooms are unfit for food by decay or other cause, producing simply a disagreement with the system by containing some bitter, acrid, or slimy element, or by the presence of a wonderful and dangerous alkaloid which is absorbed in the intestinal canal. This alkaloid, so far as known, is found only in the Amanita family."

To Mr. Palmer, then, is due the chemical segregation of the Amanita group as the only repository of this deadly toxic.

It has not been discerned in other species of fungi, whose so-called "poisonous" effects are more often traceable to mere indigestibility, the selection of "over-ripe" specimens, or to idiosyncrasy, rather than to their distinctly poisonous properties.

Many mushrooms of other families which do possess ingredients chemically at war with the human system—as the Russula emetica and certain Lactarii, for instance—at least give a fair warning, either by taste or odor, of their dark intentions.

Owing to the numerous deaths every year consequent upon mushroom-eating, and nearly always directly traceable to the Amanita, the discovery of an antidote to this poison has been the quest of many noted chemists—several supposed antidotes having been experimented with upon dogs and other animals without desired results. These included atropine, the deadly crystalline alkaloid from the Atropa belladonna. The earlier experiments upon animals with this drug in Paris, as described by Dr. Gautier in 1884, while encouraging, were not considered conclusive, but were sufficient to warrant the suggestion that the treatment upon man might be effective. In a rÉsumÉ of the subject in the Philadelphia Medical and Surgical Reporter, December, 1885, for the benefit of the medical practitioners who are so frequently called upon to attend cases of mushroom poisoning, Captain Charles McIlvaine recommended the administration of a dose of atropine of from 0.05 to 0.0002 milligramme, and it was later reserved for the same gentleman to witness the first authentic instance of the application of this remedy in antagonism with the Amanita poison in the human system. The report of this experience was afterwards published (see Bibliography, No. 6), embodying also a complete and authentic account of the symptoms and treatment of the cases by the attending physician, Dr. J. E. Shadle, of Shenandoah, Pa., which account I feel is appropriately included here, being in full sympathy with the solicitous spirit of my pages. I therefore quote the statement of Dr. Shadle for the benefit of those interested.

Shenandoah, Pa., October 26, 1885.

Mr. Chas. McIlvaine:

? Bismuth subnit., ?v;
Creosote, gtt. xv;
Mucil. acaciÆ, f?i;
Aq. menth. pip., q.s. ad f?iii. M.
Sig.—Teaspoonful every one or two hours.

I have the honor to remain

Yours very respectfully,
J. E. Shadle, M.D.

In reply to the queries, Was atropine administered in all the cases? and What was the total amount administered to each? Dr. Shadle responded as follows:

Shenandoah, Pa., October 29, 1885.

Yours truly, J. E. Shadle.

The interval between the ingestion and the symptoms is, therefore, a most important aid in the diagnosis of a case of mushroom poisoning; and in the event of an Amanita, heretofore absolutely fatal, it is presumably under the control of medical science, now that the deadly toxic principle has at last found its enemy in the neutralizing properties of the equally deadly atropine.

It would seem, moreover, from the severe personal experience of Mr. Julius A. Palmer, that the poison of the Amanita is quite capable of mischief without being taken into the digestive organs. So volatile is this dangerous alkaloid that it may produce violent effects upon the system either through its odor alone, or by simple contact with the skin and consequent absorption.

Mr. Palmer, in his before-mentioned article in the Moniteur Scientifique, Paris, relates the following experiences:

"Once while perspiring from a long walk I undertook to bring in a large bunch of the Amanita for an artist. Seated in a close car, holding them in my warm hand, although protected by a paper wrapper, a fearful nausea overcame me. The toadstool was not at first suspected, yet I had all the symptoms of a sea-sick person, and was only relieved by a wide distance between myself and the exciting cause.

"While writing this article," he continues, "a friend sent me two very elegant specimens of the Amanita tribe. They were in a confined box. On opening it I smelled of them a few times, and allowed the box to lie near my desk while I wrote to a medical gentleman anxious to procure such for chemical experiment. Having sent them away the matter was dismissed from my mind for three hours after, when, by an attack of vomiting and oppression at the stomach, they were enforced upon my attention. The whites of my eyes became livid, and even until noon the day following the leaden color of my face was noticed by more than one person."

The moral of this story is that the less the reader has to do with Amanita fungi the better. Let them have a wide berth, or at most an annihilating kick, lest by their alluring beauty they tempt the next unwary traveller who shall encounter them.

But you desire a specimen "to show a friend," or "to make a photograph of, or a sketch," perhaps. In such case it were well to consider further the experiences of Mr. Palmer, which will show the wisdom of keeping your gustatorial and artistic mycology in separate expeditions, or at least of providing your poison-exhaling Amanita specimen with a cage by itself. In the same article he continues:

"Mushrooms make the same use of the atmosphere as men, even their exhalations are accordingly vitiated with their properties. Those not deadly thus attack humanity—namely, by absorption of their essential elements by the whole system. They also inoculate each other with or without contact, so that if edible and noxious toadstools are gathered together the former will absorb the properties of the latter."

In proof of this assertion he instances a personal experience as follows: "About four years ago a number of poisonous mushrooms (not AmanitÆ, but of a totally different family) were sent me with edible fungus. The two varieties had lain twelve hours in the same box. The noxious ones were rejected, and the esculent washed and eaten. In a moment my appetite was gone; violent perspiration, vertigo, and trembling were the next symptoms; then chills, nausea, purging, and tenesmus, all within thirty minutes. Now the substance could not have reached the intestines. The virus absorbed from the noxious fungus permeated the whole system through eating the harmless ones; unmixed with other food it acted upon the muscles through an empty stomach; once spent, the ailment passed off," etc.

From these and other experiences he draws the following conclusions: The poisonous principle of a fungus being absorbed by a harmless element, if the latter be eaten the venom acts more quickly. In reinforcement of this he states that "if the Amanita be cut in sections and laid in vinegar the fungus may be eaten without danger to life; but on a very small dose of the vinegar, death will follow more speedily than if the whole toadstool be eaten." Further interesting matter upon this topic is contained in the article from which I quote, and to which the reader is referred in his volume included in my bibliographical list. The work also contains numerous other collected articles of Mr. Palmer's upon this subject of fungi, to which he has devoted so much attention, and with which his name has become so popularly identified in America.

The allusion to vinegar as an absorbent of the poison suggests the prevalent habitual use of salt as a safeguard by many in the employment of the fungus as food, as both of these ingredients play a prominent part in a fungus cuisine. It is averred by some writers that one of the most noxious of AmanitÆ—the Fly-agaric—is eaten in some countries, notably Russia, without unpleasant results, while it is confidently asserted to be harmless after, as it were, having its venom drawn by a soaking in brine previous to cooking. Boiling—both in the possible neutralizing of the poison through heat, and in the withdrawal of the same in the solution—would also be contributive to safety in such cases, provided the tainted liquid were not retained as in a stew or soup.

On this topic it is interesting to note the epicurean perversity of a certain French author, who, in the face of the already overwhelming abundance of nature's esculent species of fungi, must needs include all the deadly AmanitÆ as well, though he gives a recipe by which the poison is extracted by the copious aid of salt, vinegar, boiling water, and drawing. This process, on general principles, might invite humorous speculation as to the appetizing qualities of the residual morsel thus acquired, or as to the advisability of deliberately selecting a poisonous substance for the desideratum of the washed-out, corned, spiced, nondescript remnant which survives the process of extraction, not only of its noxious properties, but of even what nutriment it might possibly contain.

Fancy a beefsteak similarly "prepared," all its nourishing ingredients extracted and thrown away; its exhausted remnant of muscular fibre now the mere absorbent vehicle for vinegar, salt, lemon-juice, butter, nutmeg, garlic, spice, cloves, and other seeming indispensables to the preparation of the Champignon À la mode!

The verdict of the extreme fungus epicure upon the delectable flavor of this or that mushroom must indeed be taken cum grano salis, the customary culinary treatment, or maltreatment, of these delicately flavored fruits having for its apparent object the elimination as far as possible of any suggestion of the true flavor of the fungus. I fancy that even the caustic, rebellious root of the Indian-turnip or the skunk-cabbage thus tamed and subdued in a smothering emollient of spiced gravy or ragoÛt might negatively serve a purpose as more or less indigestible pabulum.

While, as already mentioned, a few of this genus Amanita are edible, it is well in concluding our chapter to emphasize the caution of an earlier page as to the absolute exclusion of the entire genus from the bill of fare of the amateur mycophagist. There is an abundance of wholesome, delicious fungi at our doors without them.

Many species of Amanita are to be found more or less frequently in company with the esculent varieties recommended in the chapters following. Among these the two extremes of variation from the typical form are seen in the A. muscarius in its permanent retention of the volva scales and the obscurity of its cup, and in the A. phalloides, herewith pictured about half natural size, with the frequent entire absence of these remnant scales, which wither and fall off, leaving the yellowish or greenish cap perfectly smooth.

It is to the volva or cup, then, that we must turn for the one fixed permanent character by which this genus is to be identified.

AMANITA PHALLOIDES

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