Mushrooms and Their Use

Excerpt from: INTRODUCTION-GENERAL STATEMENTS. Many articles on mushrooms have recently appeared in periodicals in this country, from which it is evident that there is a desire on the part of many persons to obtain information concerning them. It has, therefore, seemed good to me to tell what little 1 know about the subject, even at the risk of taking up what may appear to some a matter already well discussed. I am the more strongly inclined to do this because of numerous...
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Excerpt from: INTRODUCTION-GENERAL STATEMENTS.

Many articles on mushrooms have recently appeared in periodicals in this country, from which it is evident that there is a desire on the part of many persons to obtain information concerning them. It has, therefore, seemed good to me to tell what little 1 know about the subject, even at the risk of taking up what may appear to some a matter already well discussed. I am the more strongly inclined to do this because of numerous private appeals to me for information of this character, and because no single periodical can hope to reach all the people in this vast country who desire information on such an interesting topic. Besides, no single writer is likely to exhaust the subject, or to tell all that should be known concerning it; what one may omit another may express, and in this way general knowledge may be increased.

The times seem auspicious for such an undertaking, for with much depression in financial and business circles, with lack of employment and the reduction in wages now taking place, anything that promises to cheapen the cost of living or add to the means of subsistence of the unemployed or of those employed on short time or at low wages, must possess a peculiar interest. "Hard times" may now and then compel us to look into Nature's bountiful storehouse for a supplementary supply of food. And Nature, almost always lavish in her gifts, has indeed provided a bountiful supply, which in this country has been greatly overlooked and almost entirely neglected until very recent years.

Mushrooms have been, and still are, much more largely consumed in Europe than in this country. In China also, where, with her teeming population, the cost of living seems to be reduced almost to its minimum, they are extensively used. China itself does not supply its own demand for them, and therefore they import large quantities from Japan and other islands of the Pacific ocean. In some of the cities of Europe, the consumption of them is so great that a superintendent of the market is employed to inspect those offered for sale, and to destroy those that are unwholesome or unfit for food. In this way it has been ascertained that more than thirty tons are annually consumed in Rome alone! They are not used by the poorer classes of people exclusively, for the wealthy and the nobility are apparently as fond of them as any other class. They are served at the tables of the hotels and on great occasions.

In this country, the high price of the common or cultivated mushroom (usually fifty cents to a dollar a pound) excludes it from the tables of the poor who live in cities or where they are unable to gather it in the wild state; but, fortunately for them, there are many other species quite as good as this, which it is possible to have in the season for the trouble of gathering. No labor is expended in their cultivation, no costly hot-houses or mushroom cellars are occupied by them; nature produces them at her own expense, and often in great abundance. They afford palatable and nutritious food; and yet they are generally allowed to decay where they grew. In this state alone, at least seventy-five species are known to occur that are available for food. There are here also nearly six hundred other fleshy or similar fungi, many of which will doubtless yet be found to be edible. Experimenters are already in the field, and additions are frequently made to the esculent list. It is true that some are of small size, or of rare occurrence or limited range; but others occur with frequency, are of fair size and wide range, and in favorable seasons and localities are found in great profusion. Some occur early in the season, others in midsummer, and many in late summer and in autumn; so that there is a succession of crops, which in wet seasons at least make an almost continuous supply possible.