[83] It grows not only throughout Europe, but in India also.
[84] We should apply the same rules of discrimination here as elsewhere. Have we not picked potatoes for our table out of the deadly family of Solana? selected with care the garden from the fool’s parsley? And do we not pickle gherkins, notwithstanding their affinity to the Elaterium momordicum, which would poison us if we were to eat it?
[85] “N’est-il pas bien plus simple et bien plus sûr en même temps, puisqu’on le peut, de prévenir les maux, que de spéculer sur les moyens si souvent incertains de les guérir?”—Bull. Pl. Vénén. p. 11.
[86] Vide Vittadini and Roques.
[87] Roques fell in with two soldiers at St. Cyr, who had gathered and were in the act of carrying off twice the quantity of this fungus necessary to kill the regiment, when he interfered, and no doubt saved many lives in doing so. The soldiers, it appears, had mistaken the Ag. necator for the Hydnum repandum, to which it bears some slight resemblance in colour, and in nothing else.
[88] The converse of this remark by no means holds true; the Amanita verna, the Am. phalloides, the Ag. semiglobatus, dryophilus, and muscarius, though amongst the most deadly of this class of plants, do not change colour on being cut; the flesh of the first two is, moreover, of a tempting whiteness, like that of the common puff-ball, than which there is not a safer or a better fungus. “Omnino ne crede colori” is our only safe motto here.
[89] Johnson’s Dictionary.
[90] He was wrong here: the oak produces both the Fistulina hepatica and the Agaricus fusipes, two excellent funguses, particularly the last, which, properly dressed or pickled, have not many rivals.
[91] As was known to the Greeks, ‘Prepare your funguses with vinegar, salt, or honey, for thus you will rob them of their poison,’ οὕτω γὰρ αὐτῶν τὸ πνιγώδες ἀφαιρεῖται.
[92] Vittadini, however, ate largely of this fungus, which he describes as very disagreeable, though it did not prove poisonous to him.