The Amanita, like most falsehoods, is pleasant to the sight. Its round pileus, of a beautiful orange-red colour, spotted with white warts, and lined with white gills, seems to invite your attention. (Fig. 73.) Strike it down with your stick; the lamellæ or gills underneath resemble the white leaves of a book. Its graceful stalk, ornamented on the upper part by a well-designed necklet, is bulbous in its lower portion; its flesh is dazzlingly white; in short, its entire appearance is attractive. Yet it is a traitor! You little know the depth of its wickedness. Mix a few shreds of its white flesh with a little milk; every fly which drinks of the mixture will, in a few seconds, fall dead, their swollen abdomen bearing testimony to the effect of the poison. And in many districts of Germany, particularly in Thuringia, the peasants make use of it to rid themselves of the swarms of flies which, towards the close of summer, infest their habitations. It is thus that man may frequently turn to his advantage those objects of nature which, at the first glance, appear injurious rather than useful.
Various experiments have been essayed to test the intoxicating influence of our Amanita. Bulliard, author of the "Histoire des Champignons de France," made two cats partake of it. Six hours afterwards, these animals, who are so tenacious of life, were dead.
Haller, in his "Histoire des Plantes Vénéneuses de la Suisse," says that "the Agaricus muscarius (Amanita muscaria) cannot be eaten with impunity, six Lithuanians having died of it; and in Kamtschatka it has been known to excite deadly attacks of delirium, accompanied by so deep a despondency, that those who have eaten of it would fain fling themselves into the fire, or fall upon their knives or daggers." This, however, we take to be an exaggeration. The truth is, that in Kamtschatka it is used to produce intoxication; and such is its strength, it imparts an intoxicating property to the urine of those who swallow it. When the fungus itself is not at hand, the would-be drunkard frequently resorts to this nauseous potion.
The flesh of the Amanita is not yellow. Yet Vicat speaks of poisonings produced by the Yellow Amanita. "I had much difficulty," says this physician, "in saving two families of Lausanne, poisoned through eating a very small quantity of mushrooms, which the father in the one case, and the mother in the other, had mistaken for Agarici Cæsarei, though they were both esteemed great connoisseurs, and especially in this species; nor had they been once deceived for upwards of thirty years, until they indulged themselves in this delicious but deceitful dish."
These poisonings could have been occasioned only by the Amanita. Some varieties exist, in which the under surface of the pileus is yellow, but the flesh is white. To one of these varieties Vicat's anecdote probably refers.
Thus, the Amanita formosa of Persoon has pedicel, pileus, and warts of the pileus, of a citron yellow. It is but a variety of the Amanita muscaria.
The Amanita umbrina of the same botanist (the Agaricus pantherinus of De Candolle) has an olive-coloured pileus; its surface, like that of Amanita muscaria, is covered with white scales.
The Amanita solitarius is distinguished by the size of its umbilical cap,—sometimes depressed in the centre,—which is furnished with a great number of white or pale brown scales; when fully developed, it measures from thirty to forty centimetres in diameter. The pedicel is bulbous, with a membranous ring, white as snow, clasped around it; at the base it is clothed in pellicles, the remains of its scaly volva. The flesh is firm, thick, and white. You rarely meet with more than two or three individuals in the same locality; hence its name of solitarius. Bulliard speaks of the flesh as good to eat, when cooked on a gridiron, and seasoned with fresh butter, salt, and pepper. It is possible. But as it is so easily confused with the poisonous species, the author of the "Histoire des Champignons" would have done better to prohibit its consumption, whether eatable or not.
We may now turn to the method adopted by Dr Vicat to save the lives of the two families at Lausanne, who, as we have seen, were poisoned by partaking of the Amanita:—