Edible Mushrooms, if kept uncooked, become dangerous: they cannot be sent to table too soon. In Rome our favourite _Pratiola_ is held in very small esteem, and the worst wish an Italian can express against his foe is "that he may die of a _Pratiola_." If this species were exposed for sale in the Roman markets it would be certainly condemned by the inspector of fungi. Fairy rings are produced by the spawn, or mycelium, beginning to germinate where dropped by a bird or a beast, and exhausting the soil of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and potash, from the centre continuously outwards; whilst immediately within the enlarging ring there is constantly a band of coarse rank grass fed by the manure of the penultimate dead spawn. The innermost starved ground remains poor and barren. In this duplicate way the rings grow larger and larger. Our edible Mushroom is a _Pratella_ of the subgenus _Psalliota_, and the _Agaricus campestris_ of English botanists. In common with the esculent Mushrooms of France it contains phosphate of potassium--a cell salt essentially reparative of exhausted nerve tissue and energy. The old practice of testing Mushrooms with a silver [375] spoon, which is supposed to become tarnished only when the juices are of an injurious quality (i.e., when sulphur is developed therein under decomposition) is not to be trusted. In cases of poisoning by injurious fungi after the most violent symptoms may have been relieved, and the patient rescued from immediate danger, yet great emaciation will often follow from the subsequent effects of the poison: and the skin may exhibit an abundant outbreak of a vesicular eruption, whilst the health will remain perhaps permanently injured. Strong alcoholic drinks should never be taken together with, or immediately after eating Mushrooms, or other innocent fungi. Experienced fungus eaters (mycophagists) have found themselves suffering from severe pains, and some swellings through taking whiskey and water shortly after the meal: whereas precisely the same fungus, minus the whiskey, could be eaten with impunity by these identical experimentalists. MUSTARD. The wild Mustard (_Brassica Sinapistrum_), a Cruciferous herb commonly called Chedlock, from _leac_, a weed, and _kiede_, to annoy, grows abundantly as a product of waste places, and in newly disturbed ground. The Field Mustard (_Arvensis_) is Charlock, or Brassock; its botanical term, _Sinapis_, being referable to the Celtic _nap_, as a general name for plants of the rape kind. Mustard was formerly known as "senvie" in English. It has been long cultivated and improved, especially in Darham.