arbonate of soda, so far from reducing them to a mess, left them very
nearly intact. The other mushrooms whose size entitles them to culinary
consideration offer the same degree of resistance. In the second place,
there is no loss of succulence and hardly any of flavor. Moreover, they
become much more digestible, which is a most important condition in
a dish generally so heavy for the stomach. For this reason, it is the
custom, in my family, to treat them one and all with boiling water,
including even the glorious imperial.

I am a Philistine, it is true, a barbarian caring little for the
refinements of cookery. I am not thinking of the epicure, but of the
frugal man, the husbandman especially. I should consider myself amply
repaid for my persistent observations if I succeeded in popularizing,
however little, the wise Provencal recipe for mushrooms, an excellent
food that makes a pleasant change from the dish of beans or potatoes,
when we can overcome the difficulty of distinguishing between the
harmless and the dangerous.

[Recorder's note: Modern mycologists warn against Fabre's claim that
boiling neutralizes all mushroom poisons.]

CHAPTER XIX. A MEMORABLE LESSON

I take leave of the mushrooms with regret: there would be so many other
questions to solve concerning them! Why do the maggots eat the Satanic
bolete and scorn the imperial mushroom? How is it that they find
delicious what we find poisonous and why is it that what seems exquisite
to our taste is loathsome to theirs? Can there be special compounds in
mushrooms, alkaloids, apparently, which vary according to the botanical
genus? Would it be possible to isolate them and study their properties
fully? Who knows whether medical science could not employ them in
relieving our ailments, even as it employs quinine, morphia and other
alkaloids? One might inquire into the cause of the liquefaction of the
coprini, which is spontaneous, and that of the boletes, which is brought
about by the maggots. Do both cases come within the same category?
Does the coprinus digest itself by virtue of a pepsin similar to the
maggots'? One would like to discover the oxidizable substance that gives
the luminous mushroom its soft, white light, which is like the beams of
the full moon. It would be interesting to know whether certain boletes
turn blue owing to the presence of an indigo which is more liable
to change than dyers' indigo and whether the green of the so-called
delici