The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-10-05
Beware Of Fake
 "TestS'' To Tell
 Fatal ToadstoaIs

| popularly called "toadstools'O ha:
 resulted in a flood of newspaper arti
 cles on the subject of mushrooms ana
 toadstools Some of the information
 handed out was far from being ac
 curate. In several instances it wa. | Imaginable. especially as coming from
 newspapers that claim to be the foun. l tain head of wisdom.
 l The interest stirred up by the toad.
 stool' fatalities also gave the alleged
 'toadstool authorities who abound
 in every locality, chance to air theil | knowledge, and many were the stories
 told to credulous listeners of infalliblt | tests for telling mushroom from | a "toadstool' As very large num- | Der of people are densely ignorant | about edible and. poisonous fungi, the wise ones generally get away with | their weird tales.
 | The so-called distinction between 'mushrooms'' and 'toadstools" is pure ly arbitrary. popular prejudice call | ing the edible and harmless kinds | of fungi 'mushrooms'' and the poison ous kinds "toadstools'' So we may l ignore this distinction and call both the harmless and deadly fungi mush- | rooms.
 | As for the test and proofs for telling edible mushrooms from the deadly kind, they are all worthless For instance, one of the alleged signs
 of an edible fungus is a pleasant taste and odor.'' While most harm less mushrooms conform to this test 1 on the other hand, the Agaricus Aman- lta, one of the dealiest species of fun g1 known, has an agreeable Odor and taste. Equally worthless ''favorab ble'' signs are ''peeling of the skin of the cap from rim to center" pink giHs, turning brown in older specimens, ,
 solid stems,'' and many others. One of the oldest of the .sunfavor- able" signs is boiling mushrooms with a silver coin Or spoon, the blackening of the silver indicating danger This is no proof at all The poisonous Amanita, mentioned above, in it's fresh condition, has no effect upon silver. And so with the other signs for showing whether a mushroom is poisonous, such as found in dark. damp places,'' having bright colors'' and changing color by immersion in salt water. or upon being dusted with salt''
 ny InlS time the reader, IT ne doeS not already know, has probably begun to ask: Well. how in thunder DO you tell a harmless mushroom from a poi so9ouS One?' The answer is that it must be learned as species the same as we learn to distinguish a chestnut tree from an oak, a robin from a thrush or a dandelion from a daisy
 In some instances a species of harm less mushroom may resemble a poi sonous one, just as the harmless stag horn sumach resembles the dangerous poison sumach. But each sumach pos- sesses it's own special characteristics, by which, with a little care, it may be identified. So with different kinds of mushrooms. Each has its own spet cial features, variations of gills, spores, color, juice, consistency of pulp, etc.
 Ali of the deadly mushrooms be- long to the Amanita family. The poi son in these mushrooms is an alkaloid. known as amanitine, and it affords the doctors and undertakers considerable business. It has enjoyed great popu- larityA with people who wished to per- manently remove those obnoxious to them. Agrippana is said to have re moved her husband, the Emperor Claudius. by giving him. some ofsthese deadly kind of fungi.
 The Amanita group has several characteristics by which it is easily identified. One of the plainest is a cup or socket about the base of the stem. The cup is generally hidden underground, and must be looked for. w. Hamilton Gibson in his book Our Edible Toadstools and Mushrooms and How to Distinguish Thems'' says of this cup:
 "This poison cup may be taken as the cautionary symbol of the genus Amanita, common to all the species. Any mushroom or toadstoOl,, therefore, whose stem is thus set in a socket, or which has any suggestion of such a socket, should be labeled poison; for though some of the species having this cup are edible, from the popular point of view, it is wiser and certainly safer to condemn the entire group
 There are something over 1000 spe- cies of fungi, large enough to be call ed mushr ooms, in our temperate belt Tn the United States 150 of these are known to be edible Probably, if the truth were known, many more are fit for food. Some thirty of these may easily and safely be identified by the amateur, with the aid of a good book on the subject, like the. one of Gib- sons mentioned above.
 Several of the edible kind cannot be mistaken for any other species. Among these are the beefsteak mush- room which grows on the stumps or trunks of chestnut and oak trees at this time of the year, the delicious and highly prized Morel and the White Helvella.
 It is probable that the nutritive value of mushrooms has been much overestimated. At one time they were thought to contain as much nourishment as beefsteak and in fact. have often been called vegitable beef steaks. But in recent years this theory has been exploded, and it is now thought that mushrooms contain no more nutriment than vegetables such as carrots and turnips.
 Mushrooms are subject to quick de- cay and should be gathered and eat en while perfectly fresh. As they grow older infested with small grubs, which quickly honeycomb the pulp and reduce it to a decaying mass. These grubs are matched from eggs which insects implant in the fungus when it first begins to grow.
 In former ages, these grubs were supposed by the ''scientists'' of those times to be the offspring of the ''poi- sonous toadstooP' just as carrion flies bees and wasps were supposed to be of spontaneous origin-flies being al- legged to spring from putrefying anil nal matter, bees from defunct bulls and the belligerent wasp from war horses which had passed from this life!