David Badham

“ Even in those republican times when no other rights were held sacred throughout France, the privileges of the stomach were respected; when men found that they might get on quite as well, or better, with a bad heart, but that they could not get on so well without a good digestion, it is not so much to be wondered at if they made idols of their bellies, established a School of Cooks to rival the School of Athens, and became famous for “those charming little suppers in which they used to set the decencies of life at defiance.” ”

“ None but a determined theorist [66] would nowadays think of prescribing diet for the stomach of a single patient, far less for all those of a polygastric public; neither does an enlightened, self-educated public, that can read Liebig and thoroughly appreciate its own case, hold out much encouragement for such advice. The day is past without return for long-winded prose epic on indigestion; a livelier mode of dealing with the subject of non-naturals, in the shape of novels and romances, has won the public ear. ”

“ Life, on such an hypothesis as this, ceases to be the opposite and antagonist principle to death, of which it then becomes but a different mode and a new phasis. It is not the incomprehensibility of such a notion (be it well understood) against which the objection lies, for as life begins and ends in mystery, that would be no objection; it lies in the rashness of attempting to solve an admitted mystery, by placing a palpable absurdity in its room; vainly and irreverently arrogating to itself the honours of a discovery which we are to believe if we can! ”

“ But if in France far too much attention has been paid to the culinary art, too little attention has surely been paid to it at home; for the art of cookery, properly understood, is not only the art of pleasing the palate, but the stomach also. [64] In France, the dinner is the thought of the morning, and sometimes the business of the day, but in France everybody dines; in England, where the word ‘dinner’ never occurs till it is announced, [29] a few wealthy men dine well, the middling ranks badly, and the poor not at all. ”

“ The feverish torpor, I had almost ventured to call it the summer hybernation, has ceased with September, and Autumn has come round with the vivifying influence of a new Spring; then if we go abroad to wander, whether our walk be across plains or through upland woods, we shall not stroll a mile without stopping a hundred times to admire what is to many of us a nearly new class of objects which have sprung up suddenly and now beset our path on every side. These are the Fungus tribe, which are as beautiful as the fairest flowers, and more useful than [148] most fruits ”

“ To appeal to experience, when did mushrooms ever spawn toadstools? When was the Pietra funghaia ever seen to bring forth anything but its own Polyporus? or the fig, the poplar, or the hazel (when singed and watered to render them prolific) exhibit any but their own particular mushroom? Spores are endowed, like other seeds, with an extraordinary vitality, which may lie dormant in them for an indefinite period ”

“ Graves, which, on the authority of Mr. Berkeley, weighed nearly thirty pounds.
The Fistulina hepatica, which Schœffer calls the Poor Man’s fungus, “fungus pauperibus esculentus,” deserves indeed the epithet if we look to its abundance, which makes it an acquisition to the labouring class wherever it is known; but that it is in any other sense fitted for the poor, or to be eaten by those only who can purchase no other food, is what I cannot subscribe to. No fungus yields a richer gravy, and though rather tough, when grilled it is scarcely to be distinguished from broiled meat. ”

“ Nothing perishes in nature: “destructio unius matrix alterius;” life may change titles, but never becomes extinct; so soon as the more perfect plant dies, a host of other vegetable existences, hitherto enthralled [57] by laws of an organization superior to their own, now that the connection has been dissevered, put forth their separate energies, and severally assert their independence. The poplar may have perished, root, stem, and branch, but its extinction is only the signal for other existences, which had been heretofore bound up and hid within its own, to assert themselves ”

“ The fibres are effused into the pileus, spreading out like a fan through its substance; smell strong, taste agreeable; spores white, elliptical, adhering firmly to the body on which they fall. The dried plant retains much the same form it had when fresh.
On tracing this fungus to its origin, (spring is the only time, and the borders of the woodlands the proper place, to look for it,) if we dig up the earth where it grows, this will be found mouldy to a considerable depth beneath the surface, and strongly impregnated with the peculiar odour which the Prunulus exhales ”

“ If then fungus life be not to be sought for, and cannot with propriety be said to originate in any morbid conditions of the tissues from which they spring, whence do they derive life—in other words, whence in every instance comes that particular seed which, when quickened, is to produce after its kind? Lies this dormant for a season in those dead and decaying tissues, which a little later the plant originating from it is destined to embellish ”

“ The naked seeds of some are found burrowing between the opposite surface of leaves; some love the neighbourhood of burnt stubble and charred wood; some visit the sculptor in his studio, growing up amidst the heaps of moistened marble dust that have caked and consolidated under his saw. ”

“ The expansion of a fungus, according to Vittadini, is effected as follows:—“These thecæ,” of which we have been speaking, “as they swell, become distended with the contained seed, and mostly so at their free extremity, since they have more room for expansion in that direction than at the other, which is impacted into the substance of the pileus; in consequence of this, a series of wedges are formed which, as the seed continues to distend them, force out the pileus, loosen its marginal connections with the stalk, uncurl its involuted borders, and finally open up its cells, pores, and sinuses.” ”

“ Just as in the inorganic world, chemical analysis is frequently the precursor of new forms of matter resulting from the new affinities which take place, so when a vegetable dies, and the synthesis of its structural arrangement is broken up, nature frequently avails herself of this season of decomposition, to bring new individuals out of the decaying structures of the old, which, in consequence of a beautiful pre-arrangement, find there all the requisite supplies for their growth and future maintenance. ”

“ As soon as the hymenium has parted with its seed, which falls from it in the form of fine dust, the fungus, collapsing, either withers on its stem, or else dissolves into a black liquid and so escapes to the earth. In such funguses as have not a volva, the basilar or primary nucleus shoots up at once in the form of a cone, and a little later presents at its apex the rudiments of a receptacle or head ”

“ Now there is really no just ground for this fear; the esculent fungus never becomes poisonous, nor, conversely, the poisonous variety fit to eat. In Claudius’s particular case we must remember that Locusta medicated, and Agrippina cooked, that celebrated dish, in which the mushrooms, after all, were but the vehicle for the poison. As to the general fact, though cultivation undoubtedly produces considerable changes in the qualities of this, as in those of other classes of plants, they are never of such a kind as to convert that which is esculent in one locality into a dangerous food in another. ”

“ The seeds of funguses are called spores: in the great majority of cases, the microscope, which brings their shapes under observation (for to the naked eye they appear as dust) , presents them to us as round, oval, oblong, or even angular corpuscules, and, more rarely still, echinulate or with a tail. They are as various in size as in shape, the first bearing no proportion whatever to the dimensions of the future plant. They vary, too, greatly in colour, being sometimes of a pure white, and continuing so throughout the whole of their seminal existence ”

“ Would not the poor man, think you, find indigestion in ragoût, fricassees, truffles, with light wine ad libitum to drink with them? and would not the rich man find that the fat pork and hard beer were worse poison than any of the made-dishes, against which he has been so lavish in his blame? ”

“ It is an exceedingly delicate fungus, but not very common in England. The best way of cooking it, according to Vittadini, is on the gridiron; the peasants about Milan are in the habit of putting it over wood embers to toast, eating it afterwards with a little salt, in which way it has a savoury smell, and a taste like that of the Cancer astacus; when fresh it is without odour, but acquires a very strong one while drying, which he compares to that of salt meat. ”

“ Funguses have a remarkable power of re-forming such parts of their substance as have been accidentally or otherwise removed. Vittadini found that when the tubes of a Boletus were cut out from a growing plant, they were after a time reproduced. Where deep holes have been eaten into these plants by snails, such holes, on the Boletus attaining to its full growth, are partially refilled. If the tender Polyporus be cut across, the wound immediately sets about healing by the first intention, leaving not even a cicatrice to mark the original seat of the injury. ”

“ It would be extremely difficult to confound this Agaric with any other; its mode of growth in circles, the extreme narrowness of its gills, which are moreover striate, the thickness of its pileus, and the bulging character of its stalk, would render a mistake almost impossible, even did it grow in autumn when other funguses abound, in place of appearing only in spring when few species comparatively abound.
The best mode of cooking the Ag. prunulus is either in a mince or fricassee it with any sort of meat, or in a vol-au-vent, the flavour of which it greatly improves ”

“ The Gills.—Those vertical plates on the under surface of the mushroom, which radiate from the centre to the circumference, like the spokes of a wheel, are called Gills (lamellæ) ; they are not formed, as some have supposed, of layers of the reduplicated seed-membrane alone, but by a prolongation of the fibres of the pileus, which these merely invest. The fibrous structure is most apparent in Agarics with thick gills; in those where the flesh changes colour when bruised; or where, the interposed flesh remaining white, the hymenium is tinged with the colour of the ripening spores. ”

“ All the Agarics belonging to this subgenus are, during the immaturity of the fungus, furnished with a volva and a ring; some have a velum in addition, and in this case, the surface of the pileus is covered with warts, or verrucæ. This natural division was adopted long ago by Micheli, who gave the name Uovoli to those which had only the first two, and that of Tignosi to those that had all three. Altogether they form but a very small group, but one very important to distinguish accurately, as it includes, besides one or two very delicate species, some which are highly poisonous. ”

“ Coeval with many old brick fabrics of earlier times, perhaps embedded in the very mortar which holds them together, it may lurk there for centuries in quiescence, till once arousing its energies, it continues to exert them in ceaseless activity ever after. ”

“ Half a foot is its average height; it is attenuated upwards. While young, it is very thick in proportion to the pileus, and exhibits frequently the traces of a floccose veil. The flesh is thick and flabby, of a dingy white, not greatly changeable in young specimens, but deepening in colour when old, and acquiring a vinous tint; [162] the tubes are of a dirty white, those that surround the stem being shorter than the rest.
The odour of this fungus is slight; the taste subacid; the seminal dust copious, and tawny-ferruginous. It may be cooked like the B. edulis, and has an agreeable flavour ”

“ Besides the general botanical characters which apply to all varieties of Ag. campestris, almost every writer has felt the necessity of pointing out several peculiarities, belonging to each. Common to all are a fleshy pileus, which is sometimes smooth, sometimes scaly, in colour white, or of different shades of tawny, fuliginous, or brown; gills free, at first pallid, then flesh-coloured, then pink, next purple, at length tawny-black; the stem white, full, firm, varying in shape, furnished with a white persistent ring; the spores brown-black, and a volva which is very fugacious. ”

“ These, once absorbed and diffused during the lifetime of the plant throughout its whole economy, remain there in a state of potential activity, ready to burst forth and germinate whenever the necessary conditions for these wonderful changes shall be presented to them, just as though the seeds of corn now flourishing in different parts of England, had first existed for some thousand years as mummy wheat, potentially and unquickened. ”

“ The specific gravity of spores is greater than that of water, as may be seen by placing a mushroom over a glass which contains it, when, falling upon the surface, they presently subside to the bottom. These spores sometimes merely multiply without any further progress in development; sometimes they proceed a certain way only, and then, the conditions necessary for their further advance failing, this is arrested; sometimes, as in the Sistotrema, the plant appears twice under a perfect form, being for part of its existence a Hydnum, and during the other half a Boletus ”