Deadly Toadstools

All the deadly toadstools known in North America are pictured on the plate, or of the types shown on the plate.

The Deadly Amanita may be brownish, yellowish, or white.

The Yellow Amanita of a delicate lemon color.

The White Amanita of a pure silvery, shiny white.

The Fly Amanita with cap pink, brown, yellow, or red in the centre, shaded into yellow at the edge, and patched with fragments of pure white veil.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Deadly Amanita

Amanita phalloides

Fly amanita

Frosty Amanita

Yellow Amanita

White Amanita]

The Frosty Amanita with yellow cap, pale cadmium in centre, elsewhere yellowish white, with white patches on warts.

All are very variable in color, etc.

But all agree in these things. They have _gills_, which are _white_ or _yellow_, _a ring on the stalk_, _a cup at the base_, _white spores_, and are _deadly poison_.

In Case of Poisoning

If by ill chance any one has eaten a poisonous Amanita, the effects do not begin to show till sixteen or eighteen hours afterward--that is, long after the poison has pa.s.sed through the stomach and began its deadly work on the nerve centres.

_Symptoms_. Vomiting and purging, "the discharge from the bowels being watery with small flakes suspended, and sometimes containing blood,"

cramps in the extremities. The pulse is very slow and strong at first, but later weak and rapid, sometimes sweat and saliva pour out.

Dizziness, faintness, and blindness, the skin clammy, cold, and bluish or livid; temperature low with dreadful tetanic convulsions, and finally stupor. (McIlvaine and Macadam, p. 627.)

_Remedy_: "Take an emetic at once, and send for a physician with instructions to bring hypodermic syringe and atropine sulphate. The dose is 1/180 of a grain, and doses should be continued heroically until 1/20 of a grain is administered, or until, in the physician's opinion, a proper quant.i.ty has been injected. Where the victim is critically ill the 1/20 of a grain may be administered." (McIlvaine and Macadam XVII.)

Wholesome Toadstools

It is a remarkable fact that all the queer freaks, like clubs and corals, the cranks and tomfools, in droll shapes and satanic colors, the funny poisonous looking Morels, Inkcaps, and Boleti are good wholesome food, but the deadly Amanitas are like ordinary Mushrooms, except that they have grown a little thin, delicate, and anaemic.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Puffb.a.l.l.s

Brain Puffball

Cup Puffball 2 stages

Giant Puffball

Oyster Mushrooms

Moose horn clavaria

Red tipped clavaria

Golden coral mushroom

Gyromitra esculenta

Delicious Morel

Beefsteak mushrooms

Inky coprinus]

All the Puffb.a.l.l.s are good before they begin to puff, that is as long as their flesh is white and firm.

All the _colored_ coral toadstools are good, but the _White Clavaria_ is said to be rather sickening.

All of the Morels are safe and delicious.

So also is Inky Coprinus, usually found on manure piles. The Beefsteak Mushroom grows on stumps--chiefly chestnut. It looks like raw meat and bleeds when cut. It is quite good eating.

So far as known no black-spored toadstool is unwholesome.

The common Mushroom is distinguished by its general shape, its pink or brown gills, its white flesh, brown spores, and solid stem.

SNAKES GOOD AND BAD

Snakes are to the animal world what toadstools are to the vegetable world--wonderful things, beautiful things, but fearsome things, because some of them are deadly poison.

Taking Mr. Raymond L. Ditmars[4] as our authority, we learn that out of one hundred and eleven species of snakes found in the United States, seventeen are poisonous. They are found in every State, but are most abundant in the Southwest.

These may be divided into Coral Snakes, Moccasins, and Rattlers.

The coral snakes are found in the Southern States. They are very much like harmless snakes in shape, but are easily distinguished by their remarkable colors, "broad alternating rings of red and black, the latter bordered with very narrow rings of yellow."

The Rattlesnakes are readily told at once by the rattle.

But the Moccasins are not so easy. There are two kinds: the Water Moccasin, or Cotton-mouth, found in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana, and the Copperhead, which is the Highland, or Northern Moccasin or Pilot Snake, found from Ma.s.sachusetts to Florida and west to Illinois and Texas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Types of Poisonous Snakes