Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1876-11-09
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Mushrooms and ToaHSt0oIS.

IN an article on Mushrooms as a
Poison . suggested by the repant death
of three persons in one. family from
eating poisonous mushrooms, the New
ark Daily 4dcefttSeY says: Eb
1.-The lamentable cases of death by
eating poisonous mushrooms in Union
have created considerable excitement.
and a justifable prejudice has arisen
against the esculent whose epicurean
charms have long been the delight of
gourmands. This prejuJiiceA promises
to injure if not 'annihilate the market
able value of the mushroom and to
eliminate from our tables a relish
which possesses SO many dangerous
possibilities. = Better, says pater.fa-
n1ta0S, starve upon beefsteak O la
mode, than. oie from biftek, a Ia toad
stool. ISL al.is.s-5 ,4I esets
"Of mushrooms there areeStimated
to be about FIVE thousand varieties, of
which the. kinds known to medical La
Unity as agoaictts canpestr5s and esct-
te1atts are most commonly eaten There
are perhaps a half dozen other varie-
ties which are edible, but there are not
more than a dozen altogether. The
proportion Of twelye1to FIVE thousand
is sufficiently small to make the selec-
ton of the dozen rather preca-
rious. Taking #, the twelve from
the five thousand, the remainder
are all poisonous, and one variety of
these 4,9ss produced the three deaths
at Union. 4 popularity of the mush-
room is that the varieties considered
edible here are rejected in other coun-
try as poisonous, and those rejected
here are eaten there with iInpunity.
Another idiosyncracy is that they are
poisonous at one time and edible at
another. But perhaps the queerest
feature of the mushroom is that the
variety which one man may eat with
gusto and digest without difficulty, is
noxious to another. To sum up the
matter, mushrooms are as utterly I'M
trustworthy as their low class in the
vegetable kingdom would lead one to
suspect. ... a..,...s.tsta-5
''The rejection Of mushrooms is
preferable to any number Of curative
measures. Unless the mushrooms are
cultivated for market they are not to
be trusted. They are doubtful food at
best, and we hope the Union cases will
be a warning against the eating of
them, as well as other dangerous pro-
duets of the same kind. The. recent
cases so near us are not the only ones
Of the kind that have occurred lately,
and We feel justified in advising the
abolition of mushrooms as a table del
icacy. This grain of prevention is
certainly worth taking in consideration
of the unlimited i'll which may fol-
low" az
CONSIDERABLE interest has been ex-
cited among scissors manufacturers by
the recent discovery, by Sheffield
artisan, of means of entirely dis
pensing with skilled labor in the pro-
duction of scissors blades. Atpresent,
as is well known, the process of forg-
ing IS one requiring considerable skill
and time. But in this caseg the in
ventor, by an adaptation of existing
machinery, completes the operation of
making scissors blades from the. Sheet
of steel, by the aid of boy or girl
The blank is ''filed," the bow cut,
and the blade shaped, without the in
tervention of skilled hand, at twenty
times the speed at which they are at
present produced by hand forging. 1t
is stated that in point of quality these
machine-made blades have been pro-
nounced by manufacturers to- be in
,.oOroa+ obi,