For the single mushroom that we eat, how many hundreds there be that retaliate and prey upon us in return! To enumerate but a few, and these of the microscopic kinds (on the other side are some which the arms can scarcely embrace): the Mucor mucedo, that spawns upon our dried preserves; the Ascophora mucedo, that makes our bread mouldy (“mucidæ frustra farinæ”[16]); the Uredo segetum, that burns Ceres out of her own cornfields; the Uredo rubigo, whose rust is still more destructive; and the Puccinia graminis, whose voracity sets corn-laws and farmers at defiance, are all funguses! So is the grey Monilia, that rots, and then fattens upon, our fruits; and the Mucor herbariorum, that destroys the careful gleanings of the painstaking botanist. When our beer becomes mothery, the mother of that mischief is a fungus. If pickles acquire a bad taste, if ketchup turns ropy and putrifies, funguses have a finger in it all! Their reign stops not here; they prey upon each other; they even select their victims! There is the Myrothecium viride, which will only grow upon dry Agarics, preferring chiefly, for this purpose, the Agaricus adustus; the Mucor[17] chrysospermus, which attacks the flesh of a particular Boletus; the Sclerotium cornutum, which visits some other moist mushrooms in decay. There are some Xylomas that will spot the leaves of the Maple, and some those of the Willow, exclusively. 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 Racodium of the low cellar[18] festoons its ceiling, shags its walls, and wraps its thick coat round our wine-casks,[19] keeping our oldest wine in closest bond; while the Geastrum, aspiring occasionally to leave this earth, has been found suspended, like Mahomet’s coffin, between it and the stars, on the very highest pinnacle of St. Paul’s.[20] The close cavities of nuts occasionally afford concealment to some species; others, like leeches, stick to the bulbs of plants, and suck them dry; these (the architect’s and ship-builder’s bane) pick timber to pieces, as men pick oakum; nor do they confine their selective ravages to plants alone, they attach themselves to animal structures, and destroy animal life; the Onygena equina has a particular fancy for the hoofs of horses and for the horns of cattle, sticking to these alone; the belly of a tropical fly[21] is liable, in autumn, to break out into vegetable tufts of fungous growth, and the caterpillar to carry about on his body a Cordyceps larger than himself. The disease called Muscadine, which destroys so many silkworms, is also a fungus (Botrytis Bassiana), which in a very short time completely fills the worm with filaments very unlike those it is in the habit of secreting.[22] The vegetating wasp,[23] too, of which everybody has heard, is only another mysterious blending of vegetable with insect life. Lastly, and to take breath, funguses visit the wards of our hospitals, and grow out of the products of surgical disease.[24] Where, then, are they not to be found? do they not abound, like Pharaoh’s plagues, everywhere? is not their name legion, and their province ubiquity?[25]
OF THEIR GENERAL FORMS, COLOURS, TEXTURE, TASTES, SMELLS, ETC.
What geometry shall define their ever-varying shapes? who but a Venetian painter do justice to their colours?[26] or what modifications of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ convey an adequate knowledge of all their various crases and consistencies? As to shapes, some are simple threads, like the Byssus, and never get beyond this; some shoot out into branches, like seaweed; some puff themselves out into puff-balls; some thrust their heads into mitres;[27] these assume the shape of a cup,[28] and those of a wine-funnel;[29] some, like A. mammosus, have a teat; others, like the A. clypeolarius, are umbonated at their centre; these are stilted upon a high leg,[30] and those have not a leg to stand on; some are shell-shaped, many bell-shaped, and some hang upon their stalks like a lawyer’s wig;[31] some assume the form of the horse’s hoof, others of a goat’s beard: in Clathrus cancellatus you look into the fungus through a thick red trellis which surrounds it. Some exhibit a nest in which they rear their young,[32] and, not to speak of those vague shapes,
“If shapes they can be called, that shape have none
Determinate,”
of such tree parasites as are fain to mould themselves at the will of their entertainer (the fate of parasites, whether under oak or mahogany), mention may be made of two, of which the forms are at once singular and constant; one exactly like an ear, and given for some good reason to Judas (Auricula Judæ), clings to several trees, and trembles when you touch it; the other, which lolls out from the bark of chestnut-trees (Lingua di Castagna), is so like a tongue in shape and general appearance,[33] that in the days of enchanted trees you would not have cut it off to pickle or to eat on any account, lest the knight to whom it belonged should afterwards come to claim it of you. The above are amongst the most remarkable of the many Protean forms assumed by funguses; as to their colours, we find in one genus only species which correspond to every hue! The Agaricus Cæsareus, the A. muscarius, the A. sanguineus, assume the imperial purple, the A. violaceus a beautiful violet, the A. sulphureus a bright yellow, the A. adustus a dingy black, the A. exquisitus, and many others, a milk-white; whilst the A. virescens takes that which, in this class of plants, is the rarest of all to meet with, a pale-green colour. The upper surface of some is zoned with concentric circles of different hues; sometimes it is spotted, at other times of a uniform tint. The bonnets of some shine as if they were sprinkled with mica;[34] these have a rich velvety, those a smooth kid-like covering stretched over them. Some pilei are imbricated with brown scales, some flocked with white shreds of membrane, and some are stained with various-coloured milks secreted from within. The consistence of funguses is very different according to their sort, and the epithets of woody, corky, leathery, spongy, fleshy, gelatinous, pulpy, or mucous, will all find fitting application to some of them. Occasionally a fungus is secreted soft, but hardens by degrees into a compact and woody texture.
ODOURS AND TASTES.
Both one and the other are far more numerous in this class of plants than in any other with which we are acquainted. As to odours, though these be generally most powerful in the fresh condition of the fungus, they are sometimes increased by drying it, during which process too some species, inodorous before, acquire an odour, and not always a pleasant one. Some yield an insupportable stench; the Phallus impudicus and Clathrus cancellatus are of this kind. A botanist had by mistake taken one of the former into his bedroom; he was soon awakened by an intolerable fœtor, and was glad to open his window and get rid of it, as he hoped, and the Phallus together. Here he was disappointed; “sublatâ causâ non tollitur effectus,” the fœtor remaining nearly the same for some hours afterwards. A lady, a friend of mine, who was drawing one in a room, was obliged to take it into the open air to complete her sketch. As to the Clathrus, I have found ten minutes in a room with it nine too many: it becomes insupportably offensive in a short time, and its infective stench has given rise to a superstition entertained of it throughout the Landes, viz. that it is capable of producing cancer—in consequence of which superstition the inhabitants, who call it Cancrou, or Cancer, cover it carefully over, lest by accident some one should chance to touch it, and become infected with that horrible disease in consequence.[35] Batsch has described an Agaric[36] of so powerful and peculiar a smell, that before he could finish his picture (for he was drawing it) a violent headache made him desist, “vehementi afficiebar capitis dolore.” Of the others, some are graveolent in a savoury or in an unsavoury sense. This smells strong of onions,[37] that of cinnamon,[38] from which it takes its name; the A. ostreatus (auct. nost.) most powerfully of Tarragon; A. odoratus, and the Cantharellus, like apricots and ratafia (Purton); Boletus salicinus, “like the bloom of May” (Abbott); the A. sanguineus, when dry, savours of a stale poultice; A. piperatus, of the Triglia, or red mullet; the Hydna generally give out a smell of tallow; moulds have their own smells, which are mouldy and musty; some exhale the smell of putrid meat, many the odour of fresh meal; the spawn of A. prunulus and of the puff-balls (Lycoperdons) exhale an odour similar to the perfect plants; but the Pietra funghaia, filled with the spores of its own Polyporus, is without smell. When fresh, there is scarcely any perceptible odour in Boletus edulis or B. luridus, nor yet in the A. Cæsareus when recently gathered. A word about their tastes will suffice: with so many smells, they must needs have flavours to correspond, and so they have; sapid, sweet, sour, peppery, rich, rank, acrid, nauseous, bitter, styptic, might be all found in an English “gradus” (though at present, I am sorry to say, without any lines from poets in whose writings they occur), after the word ‘Fungus.’ In a few, generally of an unsafe character, there is little or no taste in the mouth while they are being masticated, but shortly after deglutition, the fauces become dry, and a sense of more or less constriction is apt to supervene, which frequently continues for some time afterwards.