Evening star., 1936-10-26
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

strictly alone, many have cause for
sorrow by being quite sure they under
stood q subject in which they really
understood little. Z
Every year stories are printed from
various parts of the country of persons
who went out to pick mess Of mush-
rooms, and somehow got hold OF poi
sonous varieties instead.
They thought they knew.
"A little learning is dangerous thing"
Pope said long ago. The passage Of
time has not changed the correctness
OF his essential idea. Perhaps there are
few fields where the wisdom of the line
is more strikingly displayed than this.
Even q beginners manual on mush-
rooms has hundreds of species displayed.
This is a knowledge for the specialist.
About all most of us can do, in respect
to it, Is to admire the more beautiful
forms from a respectful distance, and
to realize all the time that these are,
after all, most curious and, in a sense,
dreadful forms of life.
n K**
Experts tell US that the spores of inim-
tcal forms may be carried to a plantation
of edible forms, and utterly replace the
good sorts with forms which are deadly
but which appear amazingly like the
good.
These changes may occur despite pre-
cautions, and so quickly as to fool the
man who thinks he knows, who is quite
sure he knows.
If this be true, fungi of this type are
not playthings for most amateur gar
denerS, nor. indeed, will most of them
play with them in the common sense,
but quickly uproot them and dispose of
them, preferably by burning.
1t is q curious thing that a case Of
toadstool poisoning should occur in an
open space, for some experts assert that
if fungi were collected only from open
fields nine -tenths of the danger would
disappear.
That animal is unfortunate, then,
which picks up the wrong forms, but he
may have been browsing around beneath
trees, etc.
1t is questionable whether there ever
can be any sure knowledge on this sub
ject by most people. What is sure
enough is that the danger is great. be-
cause of the confusing resemblance
between good and bad. which, in this
case, means edible and rankly poisonous.
AS far as the average person is con-
cerned, there is no intermediate type, and
1t would seem highly incautious and even
reckless for such a person to take a
chance with these forms, when there are
so many other things in the world to eat.
x
The reader will see that the writer
is no admirer of these fungi; he is
perfectly willing to leave them to the
experts. He seldom sees one, even of a
beautiful type-and some of them are
curiously so-but what he shrinks back
slightly.
This attitude may be recommended to
all. The trufie may be used as the
theme Of a song from 1.-The Queens Lace
Handkerchief" an old light opera, but
that is its best use.
Mushroom sauce and soup may have
their devotees, but pea and bean soups
are good, too. Forms Of life so strik-
ingly like other forms of life, but some
harmless and some deadly poisonous, are
not things to fool with, but to be up
rooted where humans and their animal
friends congregate.
Fungi may be regarded as the snakes
of the plant world; it is said that tor
toises and squirrels feed on some of
them; what most living things had better
do is let them all severely alone.