"And now for that our fine mouthed and daintie wantons who set such store by their tooth; take so great delight to dress this only dish with their own hands, that they may feed thereon in conceit and cogitation all the while they be handling and preparing the same, furnished in this their businesse with their fine knives and razors of amber and other vessels of silver about them.
"I for my part also am content to frame and accomodate myself to their humourous fancie and will shew unto them in generall certaine observations and rules how to order and use them that they may be eaten with securitie."
The earnest plea of Dr. Badham for this neglected--rather, I may say, spurned--spontaneous harvest of fungi is well worth emphasizing in our pages; affording, as it does, a most suggestive commentary on the universal popular ignorance, so far as America is concerned, of the economic value of this perennial offering of Nature, which abounds in such luxuriance throughout our continent.
"I have this autumn myself," he writes, "witnessed whole hundred-weights of rich, wholesome diet rotting under trees; woods teeming with food, and not one hand to gather it; and this, perhaps, in the midst of a potato-blight, poverty, and all manner of privations, and public prayers against imminent famine.
"I have, indeed, grieved, when I have reflected on the straitened condition of the lower classes this year, to see pounds innumerable of extempore beefsteaks growing on our oaks in the shape of _Fistulina hepatica_; _Agaricus fusipes_, to pickle, in clusters under them; Puff-balls, which some of our friends have not inaptly compared to sweetbreads for delicacy of their unassisted flavor; Hydna, as good as oysters, which they somewhat resemble in taste; _Agaricus deliciosus_, reminding us of tender lamb kidneys; the beautiful yellow Chantarelle, that _kalon kaigothon_ of diet, growing by the bushel, and no basket but our own to pick up a few specimens on our way; the sweet, nutty-flavored Boletus, in vain calling himself '_edulis_' where there was none to believe him; the dainty Orcella; the _Agaricus heterophyllus_, which tastes like a crawfish when grilled; the _Agaricus ruber_, and _Agaricus virescens_, to cook in any way and equally good in all--these are the most conspicuous of the _trouvailles_."