he mouths of
the tubes are a bright orange-red; the stem swells into a bulb with a
delicate network of carmine veins. I divide a perfectly sound specimen
into equal parts and place these in two deep plates, put side by side.
One of the halves is left as it is: it will act as a control, a term of
comparison. The other half receives on the pores of its undersurface a
couple of dozen maggots taken from a second bolete in full process of
decomposition.

The dissolving action of the grub asserts itself on the very day whereon
these preparations are made. The undersurface, originally a bright red,
turns brown and runs in every direction into a mass of dark stalactites.
Soon, the flesh of the cap is attacked and, in a few days, becomes a
gruel similar to liquid asphalt. It is almost as fluid as water. In this
broth the maggots wallow, wriggling their bodies and, from time to time,
sticking the breathing holes in their sterns above the water. It is an
exact repetition of what the liquefiers of meat, the grubs of the grey
flesh fly and the bluebottle, have lately shown us. As for the second
half of the bolete, the half which I did not colonize with vermin,
it remains compact, the same as it was at the start, except that its
appearance is a little withered by evaporation. The fluidity, therefore,
is really and truly the work of the grubs and of them alone.

Does this liquefaction imply an easy change? One would think so at
first, on seeing how quickly it is performed by the action of the grubs.
Moreover, certain mushrooms, the coprini, liquefy spontaneously and turn
into a black fluid. One of them bears the expressive name of the inky
mushroom (Coprinus atramentarius, BULL.) and dissolves into ink of its
own accord. The conversion, in certain cases, is singularly rapid. One
day, I was drawing one of our prettiest coprini (Coprinus sterquilinus,
FRIES), which comes out of a little purse or volva. My work was barely
done, a couple of hours after gathering the fresh mushroom, when the
model had disappeared, leaving nothing but a pool of ink upon the table.
Had I procrastinated ever so little, I should not have had time to
finish and I should have lost a rare and interesting find.

This does not mean that the other mushrooms, especially the boletes,
are of ephemeral duration and lacking in consistency. I made the attempt
with the edible bolete (Boletus edulis, BULL.), the famous cepe of our
kitchens, so highly esteemed for its flav