THE MUSHROOM'S SECRET.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1717, 25 January 1905, Page 65

THE MUSHROOM'S SECRET.

Wealth beyond the dreams of avarice awaits the chemist who should first learn the mushroom’s secret. The delicate little edible fungus which thousands of delighted “gourmets” at this season of the year devour with their steak or their ragout, knows a thing or two which, if we could but share its Wisdom, would make nitrate kings of us all.

In one night the mushroom turns the nitrogen of the air and the soil into food, packing up in itseif the convents n and converting it into those miro-eii forms about 71) per cent, of the toial volume and 77 per cent, of the total weight of the atmosphere, no chemist has yet discovered a means of utilising it and converting it into these nitrogen compounds winch as contained m m-ou-t are essential to- the maiiueiiuaoc of uio human body, more particularly in the colder climates of the world. * .nut tho mushroom can do this, and if we knew its secrete we could aboiisu slaughter-houses and butchers and ah the offensive etceteras of meat-eating civilisation and turn vegetal-:ans. The mushroom cr “agaric” (from the Greek word agariken, a sort of tree-fungus used as tinder and named from the country of t-lie Agan in Sarmutia, where it abounded) is found ail over the world, but tho agaricus eampestris, the “common” or ‘‘garden” mu-broom, is the best known of the true mu.Jirooms to English readers. This, the limst ediffie of the harmless fungi, is easily distinguished from its dangerous cousin.-.. JU always grows in rich, open, breezy pastures, in place® where the grass is ke;

short by the constant grazing of cattle and sheep, and is never found in those spots so favoured by the poisonous members of the family, in wet or boggy shaded meadows, m wood® or on stumps of trees. It. is never large in size, its diameter rarely if ever exceeding four or five inches. It varies in appearance according to the soil and climate, but it always lias the same essential features. It has a fleshy head, smooth or soaly on tho upper sun ace. and varying in colour from white to shades of brown. The gills on the under side are pink, purple, or brownblack, according to its age. The stem is white, varied in shape, and of a protuberant fulness, which at a glance is to be recognised from the usually slender stalks of the “genus” toadstool. There is a much larger mushroom called by country folk the horse-mushroom, which often grows in damp grass lands, sometimes of extraordinary size, which is wholesome enough if gathered fresh, but if at all stale will reward its devourers with violent indigestion. Tho. third variety, the St. George’® mushroom, so called from its appearance in the meadows about St. George’s Buy, the 23rd of April, is perfectly wholesome;, but not much eaten in England. On the Continent, however, it is much valued.

The mysteriously rapid growth of the mushroom and its curious tendency to spring up in rings naturally attracted to it in old times much fantastic superstition. There is no record of when i: was first eaten in England, but i is doubtful if it was much ventured on till late in the middle ages. A common country belief in Shakespeare’s time was that elves and fairies danced within the rings at night and seated themselves to rest between the dances on the dewy cupolas of the plants. No children in Queen Elizabeth’s time would have ventured after dark to cross a meadow where the mushrooms grew, and the farmers were wont to attribute many cattle diseases to the spite of the gnomes whose pleasure grounds had been trespassed on by clumsy kine. But the days of such simple faith are long past, and the girls and boys of to-day would smile with contemptuous mty on any one who was foolish enough to believe in fairies. The interest of the mushroom to-day for rural folk is entirely commercial. The culture of the mushroom for profit lias for the past 25 years been incr -a many market gardeners living entirely by the fungus. In Paris the catacomb-, are used for mushroom growing, as in-

deed are caves in all carts oi trance. In Edinburgh, the disused Scotland street tunnel was a com rod n the same purpose. But even in these enlightened days gardeners arc sometimes found who believe that the

growth of the- mushroom is iitluenced by the change® of the moon.