PREAMBLE. 19

the fungus eaten was not a poisonous one, but no one had ever tested it, and it was regarded with suspicion.

It is a popular error that a "mushroom" may be distinguished from a "toadstool" by the cuticle skin of the cap. Some persons hold that if the cuticle of the cap or pileus (the botanical term for the mushroom cap) can be stripped off readily, then the fungus in question is an edible mushroom; but if it cannot be stripped off, in that case, it is poisonous. The cuticle is certainly separable in the mushroom, both wild and cultivated, but in numerous instances where it is separable in other species, they are certainly dangerous; whereas in some excellent species, which are constantly eaten, there is no separable cuticle. A wag was once heard to declare that he knew of only one universal and infallible method for determining an edible from a poisonous mushroom, and that was by eating it. If it did you no harm it was edible, but if it killed you, or made you ill, then it was unfit for food. Against this experimental method