326
ONCE A WEEK.
[October 15, 1859.
with small papillae, which heighten its tongue-
like appearance. When tom, it turns red inside;
its flesh assuming the look of beetroot, and
emitting a smell like that of wine. Its taste is
slightly acid. When old, it becomes dark brown,
or nearly black. It appears throughout the
summer. Cut into slices and fried, it tastes like
very mild liver, with somewhat of the mush-
room flavour, and a tartness like that imparted
by a squeeze of lemon. Used for the same pur-
poses as the truffle, it would probably be found
preferable to that fungus.
Two of the puff-balls are very good to eat.
Every schoolboy is familiar with these fungi,
which he knows by the name of 41 snuff-boxes/’
but which the refinement of classical botany calls
by the more dainty denomination Lycoperdon;
the Lycoperdon plumbeum and the Lycoperdon
bo vista. The principal differences between them
are that the latter is much the larger, is pear-
shaped, fixed to the ground by a short stem, and
covered on the outside with soft tender patches of
membrane. The Lycoperdon plumbeum is gene-
rally smoother, though sometimes covered with
minute, light brown, bran-like scales. Its most
usual colour is white; the hue also of the bovista .
Both are full inside of a firm white pulp; which,
if they are left to dry, turns into a light, im-
palpable powder: the “snuff” of the schoolboys.
The fumes of this, when burnt, are said to exert
on animals anaesthetic effects equal to those of
chloroform. These puff-balls are alike in taste.
They are best cut in slices, as the French cut pota-
toes, and fried with the yolk of egg. Their flavour
then very nearly resembles that of sweetbread.
I have tasted one more of the British esculent fungi; the Polyporus frondoms, a greyish-brown, branching mass of fungus, growing at the base of the oak and other trees. When broiled, it
has much of the flavour of the genuine mush-
room, the Agaricus campestris, or, to venture on
a liberty of botanical nomenclature, the Agaricus
bond fide. The first specimen I met with
occurred in a hedge at the root of a hazel-nut
tree, in a lane in Hampshire. Some little clowns
with eyes and mouths wide open, watched my
companion and myself whilst we were removing
it, and, as we walked off with it, one of them
hallooed after us: —
“That there be twooad’s myeeat!”
On another occasion, as we were gathering some specimens of the Agaricus heterophyllus in a copse, we received a like caution from a passing
countryman of the same county: —