Mushroom

“ It is the habit to do this in every case, and when the gatherer leaves a small hole from which he has pulled even a solitary mushroom, he fills it with some of the white earth from the base, no doubt intending to gather other mushrooms from the same spots before many weeks are over. ”

“ The mushrooms are prepared by boiling, by which the water acquires an intoxicating quality, and is a sort of drink which the Tartars prize beyond all other. When the nobility and ladies are assembled, and the ceremonies usual between people of distinction over, the mushroom broth goes freely round, and they laugh, talk double-entendres, grow fuddled, and become excellent company. ”

“ ‘Of the mushroom,’ said the Caterpillar, just as if she had asked it aloud; and in another moment it was out of sight.
Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the mushroom for a minute, trying to make out which were the two sides of it; and as it was perfectly round, she found this a very difficult question. However, at last she stretched her arms round it as far as they would go, and broke off a bit of the edge with each hand.
‘And now which is which?’ she said to herself, and nibbled a little of the right-hand bit to try the effect: ”

“ As I have before intimated the varying flavour of mushrooms growing on different kinds of wood, so here I suppose the unpleasant qualities of some specimens of these two well-known and favourite species, may be owing to something in the soil where they grow which they cannot assimilate, and so render a palatable and wholesome species totally unfit for the table. ”

“ Care should be taken in gathering them to twist them up by the roots, as, if they are cut off, the root, which is left in the ground, will decay, and be injurious to the young plants. Mushrooms may be made to grow in lawns, by procuring some bricks of mushroom spawn, and, after breaking them into pieces about an inch or two inches square, burying these pieces by raising a little of the turf wherever the mushrooms [Pg 243] are wished to grow, and placing the spawn under it. ”

“ In a minute or two, the Caterpillar got down off the mushroom and crawled away into the grass, merely remarking, as it went, "One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter." ”

“ The dream of the sudden flash in the night, the rising mushroom cloud and then annihilation. You are living the nightmare again but this time it's true, you know it's true. You can't be dreaming. The bombs are actually falling and huge fireballs are sweeping upward while seas of flame spread at supersonic speeds to engulf the city. You feel the blast, the searing heat, you feel your flesh melting away. You try to scream but the sound dies in your throat as your lungs shrivel. Horror makes you try again and somehow you do scream and wake yourself up. ”

“ The great question certainly was, what? Alice looked all round her at the flowers and the blades of grass, but she did not see anything that looked like the right thing to eat or drink under the circumstances. There was a large mushroom growing near her, about the same height as herself; and when she had looked under it, and on both sides of it, and behind it, it occurred to her that she might as well look and see what was on the top of it. ”

“ She stretched herself up on tiptoe, and peeped over the edge of the mushroom, and her eyes immediately met those of a large blue caterpillar, that was sitting on the top with its arms folded, quietly smoking a long hookah, and taking not the smallest notice of her or of anything else. ”

“ If they turn yellow, they are poisonous,—if black, they are wholesome. Allow the salt to act, before you decide on the question. False mushrooms have a warty cap, or else fragments of membrane, adhering to the upper surface, are heavy, and emerge from a vulva or bag; they grow in tufts or clusters in woods, on the stumps of trees, &c., whereas the true mushrooms grow in pastures. ”

“ When at their full growth, their pedicle is of a finger’s length, larger at top than at bottom, and becomes insensibly slenderer in proportion as it is nearer the earth. These mushrooms are also formed in an umbrella shape, and variegated with an infinity of little specks, situated very near one another. They are smooth and even on the upper part, but underneath leafy, like the common mushrooms. ”

“ Thou fool! Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; ”

“ Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; ”

“ Varenka, who had just crouched down to pick a mushroom, rose with a supple movement and looked round. ”

“ But time is only another liar, so go along the wall a little further: if blackberries prove bitter there’ll be mushrooms, fairy-ring mushrooms, in the grass, sweetest of all fungi. ”

“ On older trees still than these, huge lobes of fungi grew like lungs. Here, as everywhere, the Unfulfilled Intention, which makes life what it is, was as obvious as it could be among the depraved crowds of a city slum. ”

“ again she was the first to discover that wood, gone green with decay, can be made, at some expense, into little boxes; she went into the question of funguses and established the virtues of the neglected English truffle; she imported rare fish; spent a great deal of energy in vainly trying to induce storks and Cornish choughs to breed in Sussex; painted on china; emblazoned heraldic arms, and, attaching whistles to the tails of pigeons, produced wonderful effects “as of an aerial orchestra” when they flew through the air. ”

“ But I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a row of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green. ”

“ He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. ”

“ The trees bathed their great heads in the waves of the morning, while their roots were planted deep in gloom; save where on the borders the sunshine broke against their stems, or swept in long streams through their avenues, washing with brighter hue all the leaves over which it flowed; revealing the rich brown of the decayed leaves and fallen pine-cones, and the delicate greens of the long grasses and tiny forests of moss that covered the channel over which it passed in motionless rivers of light. ”

“ All the books and instructions insist that the selection of the soil is the most important part of gardening. No doubt it is. But, if a man has already selected his own backyard before he opens the book, what remedy is there? All the books lay stress on the need of “a deep, friable loam full of nitrogen.” This I have never seen. My own plot of land I found on examination to contain nothing but earth. I could see no trace of nitrogen. I do not deny the existence of loam. There may be such a thing. But I am admitting now in all humility of mind that I don’t know what loam is. ”

“ He lived, this man of the long-forgotten past, as all men live—getting his food, begetting his kind, loving, hating, fighting, rejoicing in the coming of the spring, pleased with his own person and its adornment, repeating the tales of his forefathers about the fire—then vanishing into the all-containing soil of the earth whence he came.
What man, once quickened by the spirit of the earth and touched by its thousand sweet influences, would ever think of resigning this mortal inheritance, with all its certainty of dissolution, for an immortality in some unknown, untried sphere of existence? ”

“ The moose will perhaps one day become extinct; but how naturally then, when it exists only as a fossil relic, and unseen as that, may the poet or sculptor invent a fabulous animal with similar branching and leafy horns,—a sort of fucus or lichen in bone,—to be the inhabitant of such a forest as this! ”

“ Every part of nature teaches that the passing away of one life is the making room for another. The oak dies down to the ground, leaving within its rind a rich virgin mould which will impart a vigorous life to an infant forest. The pine leaves a sandy and sterile soil, the harder woods, a strong and fruitful mould. So this constant abrasion and decay of our lives makes the soil of our future growth. The wood we now mature, when it becomes mould, determines the character of our second growth. ”

“ The ash her purple drops forgivingly
And sadly, breaking not the general hush;
The maple-swamps glow like a sunset sea,
Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush;
75All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze
Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days,
Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush. ”

“ Although worms are so remarkably deficient in the several sense-organs, this does not necessarily preclude intelligence, as we know from such cases as those of Laura Bridgman; and we have seen that when their attention is engaged, they neglect impressions to which they would otherwise have attended; and attention indicates the presence of a mind of some kind. They are also much more easily excited at certain times than at others. ”

“ What the mulberry leaf is to the silk-worm, the author's book, treatise, essay, poem, is to the critical larva; that feed upon it. It furnishes them with food and clothing. ”

“ Whether the glad flames sport amid the long dry grass of last year, or the plough turn up a deep layer of the exhaustless soil, or flocks of prairie-chickens fly up from every little valley, images of life, joy, and plenty belong to the scene. The summer flowers are not more cheerful than the spring blaze, the spring blackness of richness, or the spring whirr and flutter. The sky is alive with the return of migratory birds, swinging back and forth, as if hesitating where to choose, where all is good. ”

“ The wood is deliciously fragrant, and fine in grain and texture; it is of a rich cream-yellow, as if formed of condensed sunbeams. ”

“ We could hardly imagine a landscape of our country, with its alternations of hill and valley, field and wood, pasture and meadow, threaded with streams or dotted with lakes, not enlivened by nimble birds. How bare and empty would our orchards appear, even in the splendor of their spring bloom, without the twitter, the clear songs, the joyous melodies, and the cries of the robins, bobolinks, cat-birds, and blackbirds that haunt them! For any real enjoyment of Nature, we must have the brisk, songful, and noisy bird-life around us. ”

“ To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall. ”

“ That they may bind the moss in leafy nets. ”

“ From Samoa came over:
Came over, Sina, at the setting moon!
The moon shines round and bright;
She, with her dark-eyed maidens at her side,
Watches the rising tide.
While balmy breathes the starry southern night,
While languid heaves the lazy southern tide;
The rising tide, O Sina, and the setting moon!
The night is past, is past and gone,
The moon sinks to the West,
The sea-heart beats opprest,
And Sina's passionate breast
Heaves like the sea, when the pale moon has gone,
Heaves like the passionate sea, Sina, left by the moon alone! ”

“ Dip to tranquil shores of jasper, where the watching angel beams.
But, behold! our eyes are human, and our way is paved with pain,
We can never find Hy-Brasil, never see its hills again!
Never look on bays of crystal, never bend the reverent knee
In the sight of Eden floating — floating on the sapphire sea!
Outre Mer
I see, as one in dreaming,
A broad, bright, quiet sea;
Beyond it lies a haven —
The only home for me.
Some men grow strong with trouble,
But all my strength is past,
And tired and full of sorrow,
I long to sleep at last. ”

“ How can I think of myself when infinitude o'er me is glowing,
Glowing with tokens of love from the land where my sorrows shall cease?
Oh, summer-night of the South! Oh, sweet languor of zephyrs love-sighing!
Oh, mighty circuit of shadowy solitude, holy and still!
Music scarce audible, echo-less harmony joyously dying,
Dying in faint suspirations o'er meadow, and forest, and hill!
I must go forth and be part of it, part of the night and its gladness.
But a few steps, and I pause on the marge of the shining lagoon. ”

“ Come to my arms; for you alone
Can all my absence past atone.
O come! and to my bleeding heart
The sovereign balm of love impart;
Thy presence lasting joy shall bring,
And give the year eternal spring. ”

“ And the gay young voice as in hours of yore.
It still seems strange to be here alone,
With the rising sob of the wind without;
The sound takes a deep, insisting tone,
Where the trees are swinging their arms about.
Its moaning reaches the sheltered room,
And thrills my heart with a sense of pain;
I walk to the window, and pierce the gloom,
With a yearning look that is all in vain.
You are out in a night of depths that hold
No promise of dawning for you and me,
And only a ghost from the life of old
Has come from the world of memory!
You are out evermore! God wills it so! ”

“ But now a brow of gloom
Pourtrays, in characters of care,
That it is pleasure's tomb.
Yet none shall hear the sigh
That struggles to be free,
No tear shall trace this sallow cheek,
Nor murmur burst from me. ”

“ Botanically speaking, tomatoes are the fruit of a vine, just as are cucumbers, squashes, beans, and peas. ”