Amanita

“ Enough without Amanita 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. ”

“ No white specimens have been as yet recorded in this country. The red color disappears in the dried specimens. The striations of the margin are usually quite deep and long and almost as distant as in the edible species Amanitopsis vaginata. Some European writers have described the flesh or substance of the cap as yellowish. In our plant the flesh is white, but stained with yellow or red immediately under the cuticle. Amanita Cæsarea is the only one of the Amanitas which has yellow gills. ”

“ Neither the maggot nor the even more enterprising Moth ever touches it. They likewise refuse the mottled amanita (Amanita pantherina, D. C.) , the vernal amanita (Amanita verna, FRIES) and the lemon-yellow amanita (Amanita citrina, SCHAEFF.) , all three of which are poisonous. In short, whether it be to us a delicious dish or a deadly poison, no amanita is accepted by the grubs. The arion alone sometimes bites at it. The cause of the refusal escapes us. ”

“ Tall and shapely is the Deathcup; beautiful to look upon and smelling like a mushroom. But beware of it, a very little is enough, a morsel of the cup; the next night or maybe a day later the poison pangs set in. Too late perhaps for medicine to help, and Amanita, the Deathcup, the child of Diablo, has claimed another victim.
How shall we know the deadly Amanita among its kindly cousins, the good mushrooms? Wise men say by these:—The poison cup from which its springs; the white kid collar on its neck; the white or yellow gills ”

“ Madeline Hargrave seemed to be following him with a peculiar fascination.
"This Amanita," resumed Kennedy, "has a long history, and I may say that few species are quite so interesting. Macerated in milk, it has been employed for centuries as a fly-poison, hence its name. Its deadly properties were known to the ancients, and it is justly celebrated because of its long and distinguished list of victims. Agrippina used it to poison the Emperor Claudius. ”

“ Some of them may taste like gall and wormwood, or living and enduring fire, and an occasional specimen may make the experimenter feel briefly unwell, but if he will acquaint himself with the virulent amanita varieties, and shun them, he will not die—not from poison. ”

“ Kennedy began again, "but with the poison. Many years ago scientists analyzed its poisonous alkaloids and found what they called bulbosine. Later it was named muscarin, and now is sometimes known as amanitin, since it is confined to the mushrooms of the Amanita genus.
"Amanitin is a wonderful and dangerous alkaloid, which is absorbed in the intestinal canal. It is extremely violent. Three to five one-thousandths of a gram, or six one-hundredths of a grain, are very dangerous. ”

“ The color of the cap is usually a light reddish brown or reddish gray, sometimes almost white. This species is found usually in light open woods. In a warm moist climate it appears early in the season, and can be gathered until the frosts come. Taste very pleasant.
There is a poisonous species, Amanita pantherinus, rare, which has a viscid brown warted cap bearing a slight resemblance to that of the rubescens, but the gills do not turn red when bruised, and the volva at the base of the stem is well defined and persistent. ”

“ Vinegar is effective as a substitute for sweet-oil. If from eight to twelve hours have elapsed, the physician may rest assured that amanitine is present, and should administer one-sixtieth of a grain of atropine at once."
This atropine is intended to be injected hypodermically, and the treatment repeated every half-hour until one-twentieth of a grain has been given, or the patient's life saved.
Further consideration of the Amanita and its deadly poison and antidote, with details as to treatment in a notable case, will be reserved for the following chapter. ”

“ The only deadly poisonous kinds are the Amanitas. Others may purge and nauseate or cause vomiting, but it is believed that every recorded death from toadstool poisoning was caused by an Amanita, and unfortunately they are not only widespread and abundant, but they are much like the ordinary table mushrooms. They have, however, one or two strong marks: their stalk always grows out of a "poison cup" which shows either as a cup or as a bulb; they have white or yellow gills, a ring around the stalk, and white spores. ”

“ It is possible. But as it is so easily confused with the poisonous species, the author of the "Histoire des Champignons" would have done better to prohibit its consumption, whether eatable or not.
We may now turn to the method adopted by Dr Vicat to save the lives of the two families at Lausanne, who, as we have seen, were poisoned by partaking of the Amanita:—
I dissolved, he says, six grains of tartar emetic in a litre of water, and from time to time administered a spoonful to my [332] patients ”

“ It is a remarkable fact that all the queer freaks, like clubs and corals, the cranks and tomfools, in droll shapes and satanic colors, the funny poisonous looking Morels, Inkcaps, and Boleti are good wholesome food, but the deadly Amanitas are like ordinary Mushrooms, except that they have grown a little thin, delicate, and anæmic. ”

“ The geographical distribution of Ammonites in the ancient world, seems to have partaken of that universality, we find so common in the animals and vegetables of a former condition of our globe, and which differs so remarkably from the varied distribution that prevails among existing forms of organic life. We find, the same genera, and, in a few cases, the same species of Ammonites, in strata, apparently of the same age, not only throughout Europe, but also in distant regions of Asia, and of North and South America. ”

“ Look how it is marked."
"That's an ammonite," I said, glad to know the first thing she asked.
"An am-mo-nite?" said she. "Yes; go on," and she nodded her head.
So I told her what little I was able, how the ammonite had once been a living sea-creature, swimming about in the ocean; and how it had somehow died out, so that no ammonite was ever found now alive; and how the only ones ever seen were these fossil ammonites, which had lived so very, very long ago, that their remains were turned to stone. ”

“ The grass is the lamb's food, the lamb the wolf's;
But cruel love delights to feed on tears,
And seems to satiate never.
AMYNTAS.
⁠Alas! Alas!
Love has drained all my tears; it is my blood
Which he must thirst for now. I hope and trust,
He and this impious one will have it shortly.
THYRSIS.
Amyntas! dear Amyntas! talk not so:
'Tis idle. Take good heart. This cruel one
May treat thee ill; but thou can'st find another.
AMYNTAS.
Ah me, another! I have lost myself.
How can I find me joy, myself being gone?
THYRSIS.
Do not despair. Thou'lt win her heart at last. ”

“ Aminta's healthy frame rode her over petty agitations of a blood uninflamed, as lightly as she swam the troubled sea-waters her body gloried to cleave. She woke in the morning peaceful and mildly reflective, like one who walks across green meadows. Only by degrees, by glimpses, was she drawn to remember the trotting, cantering, galloping, leaping of an active heart during night. We cannot, men or woman, control the heart in sleep at night. There had been wild leapings. Night will lead an unsatisfied heart of a woman, by way of sleep, to scale black mountains, jump jagged chasms. ”

“ These complicated edges of the septa form the delicate and intricate lines of foliation (sutures) seen on the casts of Ammonites (Lign. 156, fig. 2) , Baculites (Lign. 161, fig. 3) , Hamites, &c. In some species the shell is thick and dense, as in the Ammonites of the Kimmeridge Clay near Aylesbury, in which one species (Ammonites biplex, Min. Conch. pl. ccxciii.) in particular abounds, and is very generally invested with the shell, as perfect as if recent. The same Ammonite occurs in the Portland limestone above, in the state of casts, without any vestige of the shell. ”

“ A section, a hundred feet thick, will exhibit, at different heights, a dozen species of ammonite, none of which passes beyond its particular zone of limestone, or clay, into the zone below it or into that above it; so that those who adopt the doctrine of special creation must be prepared to admit, that at intervals of time, corresponding with the thickness of these beds, the Creator thought fit to interfere with the natural course of events for the purpose of making a new ammonite. ”

“ The internal structure of these Ammonites is generally well preserved, the chambers being lined with spar or other mineral matter; transverse polished sections are often very beautiful from the several cells being occupied by variously coloured marble, susceptible of a high polish. (Pl. III.) In some examples the entire shell is transmuted into brilliant pyrites (sulphuret of iron) , and the chambers are filled with white spar; a specimen of this kind in my possession, collected by Lady Murchison, is the most elegant fossil imaginable.
Plate III.
Polished section of an Ammonite. ”

“ Amyntas, king of Galatia, to whom the district was for a time subject, maintained there not less than three hundred flocks. It forms part of the interior tableland of Asia Minor, and has an elevation of more than 3000 ft. It suffers from want of water, aggravated in some parts by abundance of salt in the soil, so that the northern portion, extending from near Iconium to the salt lake of Tatta and the frontiers of Galatia, is almost wholly barren, only small patches being cultivated near Iconium and the large villages. The soil, where water is supplied, is productive. ”

“ Wherever access to it can be had, we find it richly fossiliferous; but its organisms, with the exception of its Belemnites, are very imperfectly preserved. I dug up from under the trap-blocks some of the common Liasic Ammonites of the north-eastern coast of Scotland, a few of the septa of a large Nautilus, broken pieces of wood, and half-effaced casts of what seems a branched coral; but only minute portions of the shells have been converted into stone; here and there a few chambers in the whorls of an Ammonite or Nautilus, though the outline of the entire organism lies impressed in the shale ”

“ It is when one turns to the vegetable world that one finds the staple food of the Amazonian native. The manioc is to the Indian the chief necessary of life. The sweet manioc, [182] although known to these Issa-Japura tribes, is never planted, because it is not appreciated by them. They prefer the poisonous species which, as its botanical name Manihot utilissima implies, can be put to a multiplicity of uses. To eliminate the poison and render it fit for food, the manioc is subjected to several processes. ”

“ When we recollect that throughout both these great formations, the still more numerous extinct family of Ammonites is co-extensive with the Belemnites; and that each species of Ammonite exhibits also contrivances, more complex and perfect than those retained in the few existing cognate genera of Cephalopods; we cannot but infer that these extinct families filled a larger space, and performed more important functions among the inhabitants of the ancient seas, than are assigned to their few living representatives in our modern oceans. ”

“ In the shale we find numerous minute Ammonites, sorely weathered; in the sandstone, Belemnites, some of them of great size; and dark carbonaceous markings, passing not unfrequently into a glossy cubical coal. At the foot of the cliff I picked up an ammonite of considerable size and well-marked character,—the Ammonites Murchisonæ, first discovered on this coast by Sir R. Murchison about fifteen years ago. It measures, when full grown, from six to seven inches in diameter; the inner whorls, which are broadly visible, are ribbed ”

“ In Aminta's realized recollections, amid the existing troubles of her mind, the charge against him grew paler, and she could no longer quite think that the young hero transformed into a Mr. Cuper had deceived her, though he had done it—much as if she had assisted at the planting and watched aforetime the promise of a noble tree, to find it, after an interval of years, pollarded—a short trunk shooting out a shock of small, slim, stiff branches ”

“ The Amantzin and Atoyac were impatiently awaiting the result of the visit in the vestibule of the palace. When the hunter joined them, and the High Priest began questioning him as to the condition of the patients, he seemed to reflect for a moment, then answered in a grave voice—"My father is a wise man; nothing equals his knowledge; his heart can repose, for his captives will soon be delivered from the evil spirit that possesses them."
"My father speaks the truth?" the Amantzin asked, trying to read in the medicine man's face the degree of credit he should give him. ”

“ The pleasure she still knew was a recollection of the outward swim, when she had been privileged to cast away sex with the push from earth, as few men will believe that women, beautiful women, ever wish to do; and often and ardently during the run ahead they yearn for Nature to grant them their one short holiday truce.
But Aminta forgave him for bringing earth so close to her when there was yet a space of salt water between her and shore ”