These facts are interesting as illustrating the multitude of often obscure conditions upon which the life or vigorous growth of smaller organisms depends. Particular species of truffles and of mushrooms are found associated with particular trees, without being, as is popularly supposed, parasites deriving their nutriment from the dying or dead roots of those trees. The success of Rousseau's experiments seem decisive on this point, for he obtains larger crops of truffles from ground covered with young seedling oaks than from that filled with roots of old trees. See an article on Mont Ventoux, by Charles Martins, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, Avril, 1863, p. 626.
It ought to be much more generally known than it is that most, if not, all mushrooms, even of the species reputed poisonous, may be rendered harmless and healthful as food by soaking them for two hours in acidulated or salt water. The water requires two or three spoonfuls of vinegar or two spoonfuls of gray salt to the quart, and a quart of water is enough for a pound of sliced mushrooms. After thus soaking, they are well washed in fresh water, thrown into cold water, which is raised to the boiling point, and, after remaining half an hour, taken out and again washed. Gérard, to prove that "crumpets is wholesome," ate one hundred and seventy-five pounds of the most poisonous mushrooms thus prepared, in a single month, fed his family ad libitum with the same, and finally administered them, in heroic doses, to the members of a committee appointed by the Council of Health of the city of Paris. See Figuier, L'Année Scientifique, 1862, pp. 353, 384. See Appendix, [No. 31].
It has long been known that the Russian peasantry eat, with impunity, mushrooms of species everywhere else regarded as very poisonous. Is it not probable that the secret of rendering them harmless—which was known to Pliny, though since forgotten in Italy—is possessed by the rustic Muscovites?
[264] Physikalische Geographie, p. 486.
[265] Origin of Species, American edition, p. 69.
[266] Writers on vegetable physiology record numerous instances where seeds have grown after lying dormant for ages. The following cases, mentioned by Dr. Dwight (Travels, ii, pp. 438, 439), may be new to many readers:
"The lands [in Panton, Vermont], which have here been once cultivated, and again permitted to lie waste for several years, yield a rich and fine growth of hickory [Carya porcina]. Of this wood there is not, I believe, a single tree in any original forest within fifty miles from this spot. The native growth was here white pine, of which I did not see a single stem in a whole grove of hickory."
The hickory is a walnut, bearing a fruit too heavy to be likely to be carried fifty miles by birds, and besides, I believe it is not eaten by any bird indigenous to Vermont.
"A field, about five miles from Northampton, on an eminence called Rail Hill, was cultivated about a century ago. The native growth here, and in all the surrounding region, was wholly oak, chestnut, &c. As the field belonged to my grandfather, I had the best opportunity of learning its history. It contained about five acres, in the form of an irregular parallelogram. As the savages rendered the cultivation dangerous, it was given up. On this ground there sprang up a grove of white pines covering the field and retaining its figure exactly. So far as I remember, there was not in it a single oak or chestnut tree. * * * There was not a single pine whose seeds were, or, probably, had for ages been, sufficiently near to have been planted on this spot. The fact that these white pines covered this field exactly, so as to preserve both its extent and its figure, and that there were none in the neighborhood, are decisive proofs that cultivation brought up the seeds of a former forest within the limits of vegetation, and gave them an opportunity to germinate."
[267] Quaint old Valvasor had observed the subduing influence of nature's solitudes. In describing the lonely Canker-Thal, which, though rocky, was in his time well wooded with "fir, larches, beeches, and other trees," he says: "Gladsomeness and beauty, which dwell in many valleys, may not be looked for there. The journey through it is cheerless, melancholy, wearisome, and serveth to temper and mortify over-joyousness of thought. * * * In sum it is a very wild, wherein the wildness of human pride doth grow tame."—Ehre der Crain, i, p. 136, b.