land to
the Marasmius oreades, or "Fairy Ring" mushroom.

Berkeley says the French word "champignon" was originally scarcely of
wider signification than our word "mushroom," though now classical in
the sense of fleshy fungi generally. The German word _Pilz_ (a
corruption of Boletus) is used to denote the softer kinds by some German
authors. Constant and Dufour, in their recently published Atlas des
Champignons, include types of a great variety of mushrooms.

Hay contends that the pernicious nick-name "toad-stool" has not the
derivation supposed, but that the first part of the word is the Saxon or
old English "tod," meaning a bunch, cluster, or bush, the form of many
terrestrial fungi suggesting it. The second syllable, "stool," is easily
supplied. "The erroneous idea of connecting toads with these plants,"
says Hay, "seems to be due to Spenser, or to some poet, possibly, before
his time." Spenser speaks of the loathed paddocks, "paddock" then being
the name given in England to the frog, afterwards corrupted to "paddic,"
and once received, readily converted by the Scotch into "puddick-stool."
It would seem, therefore, from the foregoing, that the term "toad-stool"
can have no proper relation to mushrooms, whether edible or poisonous.

The three mushrooms illustrated and described in this pamphlet, Plates
I, II, and III, are of the order Agaricini or gilled mushrooms. They are
well-defined types and of wide geographical distribution.

FOOD VALUE OF MUSHROOMS.

Rollrausch and Siegel, who claim to have made exhaustive investigations
into the food values of mushrooms, state that "many species deserve to
be placed beside meat as sources of nitrogenous nutriment," and their
analysis, if correct, fully bears out the statement. They find in 100
parts of dried _Morchella esculenta_ 35.18 per cent. of protein; in
_Helvella esculenta_, 26.31 per cent. of protein, from 46 to 49 per
cent. of potassium salts and phosphoric acid, 2.3 per cent. of fatty
matter, and a considerable quantity of sugar. The _Boletus edulis_ they
represent as containing in 100 parts of the dried substance 22.82 per
cent. of protein. The nitrogenous values of different foods as compared
with the mushroom are stated as follows: "Protein substances calculated
for 100 parts of bread, 8.03; of oatmeal, 9.74; of barley bread, 6.39;
of leguminous fruits, 27.05; of potatoes, 4.85; of mushrooms, 33.0."

According to Schlossberger and Depping, in 100 grams