Description. Mushrooms are plants more perfect than many people imagine. They have a regular root, a stalk consisting of several arrangements of fibres, the interstices of which are all filled up with a parenchymatous substance, leading from the root to the head or umbel: the underside of this unable is full of lameller, or chives, every one of which is a regular pod, or seed vessel. If these lamellae are examined in their several states, the seeds in them may be easily discovered, and are always found to be of a size and degree of maturity proportioned to the state of the plant at the time. They have each of them also a siliquaceous aperture lengthwise the seeds lying in rows ready to fall through it. The plant is easily and readily propagated through these, and not only may be raised from seed, but, like many other plants, may be propagated by roots; several filaments at the root producing tubercles, in the manner of the potatoe, from each of which there will arise new roots, and a new plant. The periods of vegetation to this plant are also sufficiently regular; and the common opinion, of its springing up in a night, and perishing in a day, has no foundation in reality; for, in the common way of raising them on hot-beds, it is easy to find, that they often stand a fortnight or longer, from their first appearance, before they are fit for the table.
Mr. Bradley mentions an hundred kinds of mushrooms which he has seen in England, besides those very numerous small ones which constitute the mouldiness of liquors, fruits, &c. Matthiolus mentions mushrooms which weighed thirty pounds each, and were as yellow as gold. Fer. Imperatus tells us, he saw some which weighed about one hundred pounds apiece; and the Journal des Scavans furnishes us with an account of some, growing on the frontiers of Hungary, which made a full cart-load.
The poison of mushrooms has been much talked of by several persons; but there seems to be no certain account of any body's having ever been injured by eating the common mushroom; though there are perhaps some kinds of them that are truly poisonous. The ancients have taken great pains to distinguish the several kinds of them, that the world might know the hurtful from the safe. The boletus, mentioned by Juvenal, on acconut of the death of Claudius, is sufficiently described by Pliny. Cluses, among the moderns, has described a vast number of different species, every where distinguishing the esculent and wholesome from the poisonous and pernicious kinds. The several authors who have treat of them since the time of Clusius, have all mentioned the effects of some or other of the poisonous kinds, and there are numerous instances of the mischief done by them at one time or other. The true eatable mushroom is distinguished from the poisonous and unpleasnot kinds by these marks; When young it appears of a roundish form, like a button, the stalk as well as the button being white, and the fleshy part very white when broken, the gills within being livid. As they grow larger, they expand their heads by degrees into a flat form, and the gills underneath are of a pale flesh colour; but, as they stand long, become blackish.
Virtues. The Laplanders have a method of using funguses, or toad-stools as we call them, (which are o the same genus with the mushroom,) to cure pains. They collect the largest funguses which they find on the bark of beech and other large trees, and dry them for use. Whenever they have pains in their limbs, they use some of this dry matter; pulling it to pieces with their fingers' they lay a small heap of it on the part nearest to where the pain is situated, and set it on fire. In burning away, it blisters up the part, and the water discharged thereby generally carries off the pain. It is a coarse and rough method, but generally a very successful one; especially when the patient has prudence enough to apply it in time, and resolution enough to bear the burning to a necessary degree.