The Parasol Agaric.—Of this esteemed mushroom, Cooke remarks that it is in high request in Italy and France, and is also eaten in Austria, Germany, Spain, and England. It is easily identified. It has a fleshy cap, ovate when young, then bell-shaped, and afterward expanded and blunt-pointed. The extreme forms are shown in Fig. 8. The cuticle is more or less brown, and torn into patches or scales, except over the apex, these scales separating toward the margin. Flesh, white. Gills unconnected with the stem, and fixed to a collar on the cap around its top). Ring, persistent, loose on the stem. Stem six or eight inches high, tapering upward from a pear-like bulb at the base, hollow, with a loose pith, whitish brown, but more or less variegated with small and close-pressed scales.
Fig. 8.—The Parasol Agaric (Agaricus procerus).
Whenever a mushroom on a long stalk, enlarged at the base, presents a dry cuticle, more or less scaly, is darker colored over the blunt apex, has a movable ring and white gills, it must be the parasol agaric, and may be eaten without fear.—Robinson.
Chantarelle (Cantharellus cibarrius). Of this species Cooke says: “It has a most charming and enticing appearance and odor. It is almost universally eaten in all countries where it is found, England excepted.” Trattinnich says of it, “Not only this same fungus never did any one harm, but might even restore the dead.”
When young, its stem is white and solid, but becomes hollow and yellow. It is tapering, and passes into the substance of the cap, which is of the same color. The cap is lobed and irregular in shape (Fig. 9); its margin, at first curling inward, becomes expanded and wavy. The gills, or veins, as they are called, in this species, are thick, crooked, not compact, running some way down the stalk. Flesh white, fibrous, dense, with a fruity odor. Color, yellow, like yelk of eggs;
