i to be fried. They may be served
with bacon on toast.

A very old test as to the safety of Mushrooms is to stew with them
in the saucepan a small carefully-peeled onion. If after boiling for a
few minutes this comes out White, and clean-looking, the
Mushrooms may all be confidently eaten: but if it has turned blue,
or black, there are dangerous ones among them, and all should be
rejected.

The Puff Ball (_Lycoperdon giganteum bovista_) grows usually on
the borders of fields, in orchards, or meadows, also on dry downs,
and occasionally in gardens. It [366] should be collected as a Simple
in August and September. This Puff Ball is smooth, globose, and
yellowish-white when young, becoming afterwards brown. It
contains, when ripe, a large quantity of extremely fine brown black
powder, which is a capital application for stopping bleeding from
slight wounds and cuts. This also makes a good drying powder for
dusting on weeping eruptive sores between parts which approximate
to one another, as the fingers, toes, and armpits. The powder is very
inflammable, and when propelled in a hollow cone against lighted
spirit of wine on tow at the other end by a sudden jerk, its flash
serves to imitate lightning for stage purposes. It was formerly used
as tinder for lighting fires with the flint and steel.

When the fungus is burnt, its fumes exercise a narcotic property,
and will stupify bees, so that their honey may be removed. It has
been suggested that these fumes may take the place of chloroform
for minor surgical operations. The gas given off during combustion
is carbonic oxide.

Puff Balls vary in size from that of a moderately large turnip to the
bigness of a man's head. Their form is oval, depressed a little at the
top, and the colour is a pure white both without and within. The
surface is smooth at first, but at length cracking, and as the fungus
ripens it becomes discoloured and dry; then the interior is resolved
into a yellow mass of delicate threads, mixed with a powder of
minute spores, about the month of September.

When young and pulpy the Puff Ball is excellent to be eaten, and is
especially esteemed in Italy; but it deteriorates very rapidly after
being gathered, and should not be used at table if it has become
stained with yellow marks. When purely white it may be cut into
thick [367] slices of a quarter-of-an-inch, and fried in fresh butter,
with pepper, salt; and pounded herbs, and each slice should be first
di