A much larger proportion of the various kinds of mushrooms are edible than is generally supposed, but a prejudice has grown up concerning them in this country which it will take some time to eradicate. Notwithstanding the occurrence of occasional fatal accidents through the inadvertent eating of poisonous species, fungi are largely consumed both by savage and civilized man in all parts of the world, and while they contribute so considerable a portion of the food product of the world we may be sure their value will not be permanently overlooked in the United States, especially when we consider our large accessions of population from countries in which the mushroom is a familiar and much prized edible. In Italy the value of the mushroom as an article of diet has long been understood and appreciated. Pliny, Galen, and Dioscorides mention various esculent species, notably varieties of the truffle, the boletus and the puff-ball, and Vittadini writes enthusiastically of the gastronomic qualities of a large number of species. Of late years large quantities have been sold in the Italian markets. Quantities of mushrooms are also consumed in Germany, Hungary, Russia, France, and Austria. Darwin speaks of Terra del Fuego as the only country where cryptogamic plants form a staple article of food. A bright-yellow fungus allied to _Bulgarin_ forms, with shellfish, the staple food of the Fuegians. In England the common meadow mushroom _Agaricus campestris_ is quite well known and used to a considerable extent among the people, but there is not that general knowledge of and use of other species which obtains in Continental Europe. In the English-speaking countries much has been done by the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, Dr. M. C. Cooke, Worthington G. Smith, Rev. John Stevenson, Prof. Hay, Prof. Chas. H. Peck, Prof. W. J. Farlow, and others, including the various mushroom clubs, to disseminate a more general knowledge on this subject. Late investigations show that nearly all the species common to the countries of Continental Europe, and of Great Britain, are found in different localities in the United States, and a number of species have been found which have not been described in European works.