252 THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
more have begun, with an appeal to the stomach, and, having commenced, it was
not long before I was involved in the mysteries of the whole subject, and became
a fungologist.
Some of my hearers may be curious to know what obstacles I had to encounter,
and how I managed to surmount them. My country farmer was not acquainted
with more than 20 or 30 species of fungi, so that he could do no more than give
me a start, and show me Badham's book on the Edible Funguses of Great
Britain. As for myself, I was living in Lambeth, and he was in Norfolk, so that
mutual instruction was at an end.
How I got my early specimens I do not know, and the steps in my progress I
do not remember. There was no "field club" in those days that I had any
knowledge of, until I started the "Society of Amateur Botanists" with a
subscription of five shillings a year, and then we went ahead.
You must take into account the difference between 1854 and 1903 in facilities
for the study of such a difficult subject, of which all our best botanists were
profoundly ignorant—and, except perhaps Sir William Hooker, and his friend Dr.
Greville, unsympathetic. True there was the "facile princeps," the great
luminary, then beginning to be recognized, the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, but he
had written little, was rather unapproachable to students, and his satellites had
not begun to shine.
The books which a poor and struggling student could have access to were
very limited. All that I can remember, as of any service to me, were Berkeley's
volume of Hooker's English Flora. The fourth edition of Withering's
Arrangement, Badham's book, and the numbers of the Gardener's Chronicle
after 1860.
There was certainly Mrs. Hussey's Illustrations and numerous continental
works with figures, but practically no coloured illustrations available, until later
years, except the volume by Badham : others cost pounds, instead of shillings.
The two large coloured charts of Edible and Poisonous Fungi, by Worthington
Smith, came like rain upon a thirsty land in 1867.
I can only ask you to compare the facilities which are offered to the student
of fungi at the present time with what they were fifty years ago, for you to
appreciate the difficulties and struggles which environed me when I first
determined to attack and conquer this stubborn subject, or die in the attempt.
But I did not die, although I tempted Providence by eating so many different
''toadstools." Whether I succeeded in my conquest, it is not for me to judge, but
I think posterity will acquit me of making a conspicuous failure.
It will be evident from what I have said, why I have always encouraged
Field Clubs and individual wood-ramblers to interest themselves in Edible Fungi,
but I am afraid that hitherto we have, perhaps, attempted too much at a time,
and that, instead of pointing out 50 or 60 Agarics as edible, we should have been
content to confine ourselves first of all to five or six species, and have them
universally known and appreciated, before attempting others. There are no
general rules by which an edible fungus can be distinguished at sight from a
poisonous one. It is the same with flowering plants. There is no general rule
whereby the novice may distinguish the foliage of Hemlock or Fool's Paisley from
true Parsley, the root of Monkshood from Horseradish, or the red berries of a
noxious from those of an innocuous plant. The only successful method is to
become familiar with the plants themselves. Your country schoolboy, who has
only just learnt his alphabet, knows a pigeon from a crow, and a blackbird from a