“1st. That for the future an ‘Inspector of Funguses,’ versed in botany, should be appointed to attend the market in place of the peasant, whose supposed practical knowledge had been hitherto held as sufficient guarantee for the public safety.
“2nd. That all the Funguses brought into Rome by the different gates should be registered, under the surveillance of the principal officer, in whose presence also the baskets were to be sealed up, and the whole for that day’s consumption sent under escort to a central depôt.
“3rd. That a certain spot should be fixed upon for the Fungus market, and that nobody, under penalty of fine and imprisonment, should hawk them about the streets.
“4th. That at seven o’clock A.M. precisely, the Inspector should pay his daily visit and examine the whole, the contents of the baskets being previously emptied on the ground by the proprietors, who were then to receive, if the Funguses were approved of, a printed permission of sale from the police, and to pay for it an impost of one baioccho (a halfpenny) on every ten pounds.
“5th. That quantities under ten pounds should not be taxed.
“6th. That the stale funguses of the preceding day, as well as those that were mouldy, bruised, filled with maggots, or dangerous (muffi, guasti, verminosi, velenosi), together with any specimen of the common mushroom (Ag. campestris) detected in any of the baskets, should be sent under escort and thrown into the Tiber.
“7th. That the Inspector should be empowered to fine or imprison all those refractory to the above regulations; and, finally, that he should furnish a weekly report to the Tribunal of Provisions (Il Tribunale delle Grascie) of the proceeds of the sale.
“As all fresh Funguses for sale in quantities exceeding ten pounds are weighed, in order to be taxed, we are enabled to arrive at an exact estimate of the number of pounds thus disposed of. The return of taxed Mushrooms in the city of Rome during the last ten years, gives a yearly average of between sixty and eighty thousand pounds weight; and if we double this amount, as we may safely do, in order to include such smaller untaxed supplies as are disposed of as bribes, fees, and presents, and reckon the whole at the rate of six baiocchi, or threepence per pound (a fair average), this will make the commercial value of fresh Funguses very apparent, showing it here to be little less than £2000 a year.”
But the fresh Funguses form only a small part of the whole consumption, to which must be added the dried, the pickled, and the preserved; which sell at a much higher price than the first.[2] Supposing, however, that with these additions the supply of all kinds only reached a sum the double of that given above, even this would furnish us with an annual average of nearly four thousand pounds sterling; and this in a single city, and that, too, by no means the most populous one in Italy![3] What, then, must be the net receipts of all the market-places of all the Italian States? For as in these the proportion of the price of esculent Funguses to butchers’ meat is as two to three, it is plain that prejudice has deprived the poor of this country, not only of many thousand pounds of the former but also of as much of the latter, as might have been purchased by exchange, and of the countless sums which might have been earned in gathering them.[4]