At Serignan, my last stage, they have lavished their seductions upon me, so plentiful are they on the neighboring hills, wooded with holm oak, arbutus and rosemary. During these latter years, their wealth inspired me with an insane plan: that of collecting in effigy what I was unable to keep in its natural state in an herbarium. I began to paint life size pictures of all the species in my neighborhood, from the largest to the smallest. I know nothing of the art of painting in watercolors. No matter: what I have never seen practiced I will invent, managing badly at first, then a little better, at last well. The paintbrush will make a change from the strain of my daily output of prose.
I end by possessing some hundreds of sheets representing the mushrooms of the neighborhood in their natural size and colors. My collection has a certain value. If it lacks artistic finish, at least it boasts the merit of accuracy. It brings me visitors on Sundays, country people, who stare at it in all simplicity, astounded that such fine pictures should be done by hand, without a copy and without compasses. They at once recognize the mushroom represented; they tell me its popular name, thus proving the fidelity of my brush.
Well, what will become of this great pile of drawings, the object of so much work? No doubt, my family will keep the relic for a time; but, sooner or later, taking up too much space, shifted from cupboard to cupboard, from attic to attic, gnawed by the rats, foxed, dirtied and stained, it will fall into the hands of some little grandnephews who will cut it into squares to make paper caps. It is the universal rule. What our illusions have most fondly cherished comes to a pitiful end under the claws of ruthless reality.
CHAPTER XVIII. INSECTS AND MUSHROOMS
It were out of place to recall my long relations with the bolete and the agaric if the insect did not here enter into a question of grave interest. Several mushrooms are edible, some even enjoy a great reputation; others are formidable poisons. Short of botanical studies that are not within everybody's reach, how are we to distinguish the harmless from the venomous? There is a widespread belief which says that any mushroom which insects, or, more frequently, their larvae, their grubs, accept can be accepted without fear; any mushroom which they refuse must be refused. What is wholesome food for them cannot fail to be the same for us; what is poisonous to them is bound to be equally baneful to ourselves. This is how people argue, with apparent logic, but without reflecting upon the very different capabilities of stomachs in the matter of diet. After all, may there not be some justification for the belief? That is what I purpose examining.
The insect, especially in the larval stage, is the principal devourer of the mushroom. We must distinguish between two groups of consumers. The first really eat, that is to say, they break their food into little bits, chew it and reduce it to a mouthful which is swallowed just as it is; the second drink, after first turning their food into a broth, like the bluebottles. The first are the less numerous. Confining myself to the results of my observations in the neighborhood, I count, all told, in the group of chewers, four beetles and a moth caterpillar. To these may be added the mollusk, as represented by a slug, or, more specifically, an arion, of medium size, brown and adorned with a red edge to his mantle. A modest corporation, when all is said, but active and enterprising, especially the moth.
At the head of the mushroom loving beetles, I will place a Staphylinid (Oxyporus rufus, LIN.), prettily garbed in red, blue and black. Together with his larva, which walks with the aid of a crutch at its back, he haunts the fungus of the poplar (Pholiota aegerita, FRIES). He specializes in an exclusive diet. I often come across him, both in spring and autumn, and never any elsewhere than on this mushroom. For that matter, he had made a wise choice, the epicure! This popular fungus is one of our best mushrooms, despite its color of a doubtful white, its skin which is often wrinkled and its gills soiled with rusty brown at the spores. We must not judge people by appearances, nor mushrooms either. This one, magnificent in shape and color, is poisonous; that other, so poor to look at, is excellent.
Here are two more specialist beetles, both of small size. One is the Triplax (Triplax russica, LIN.), who has an orange head and corselet and black wing-cases. His grub tackles the hispid polyporus (Polyporus hispidus, BULL.), a coarse and substantial dish, bristling at its top with stiff hairs and clinging by its side to the old trunks of mulberry trees, sometimes also of walnut and elm trees. The other is the cinnamon-colored Anisotoma (Anisotoma cinnamomea, PANZ.). His larva lives exclusively in truffles.
The most interesting of the mushroom-eating beetles is the Bolboceras (Bolboceras gallicus, MUL.). I have described elsewhere his manner of living, his little song that sounds like the chirping of a bird, his perpendicular wells sunk in search of an underground mushroom (Hydnocystis orenaria, TUL.), which constitutes his regular nourishment. He is also an ardent lover of truffles. I have taken from between his legs, at the bottom of his manor house, a real truffle the size of a hazelnut (Tuber Requienii, TUL.). I tried to rear him in order to make the acquaintance of his grub; I housed him in a large earthen pan filled with fresh sand and enclosed in a bell cover. Possessing neither hydnocistes nor truffles, I served him up sundry mushrooms of a rather firm consistency, like those of his choice. He refused them all, helvellae and clavariae, chanterelles and pezizae alike.