“Vilibus ancipites fungi ponentur amicis; Boletus domino.”——Juvenal.
The rage for scampering half over the world in search of the picturesque has scarcely got far enough to tempt any, except a stray traveller or two, into the chilly regions of Siberia and Kamtschatka, and in these exceptional cases, perhaps, more from force than choice. These are regions, therefore, concerning which our information is remarkably limited. It is true that Captain Cochrane informs us that he married a wife from Kamtschatka—a virtuous maiden, who knew more of that region, perhaps, than he or she cared to tell; for the one tells us very little, and the other nothing, of yon strange land, with an almost unpronounceable name. We are told, moreover, that the capital is called by the names of St. Peter and St. Paul. Fearing lest one patron saint should not be sufficient to immortalize the metropolis of all the Kamtschatkas, the founders and inhabitants have wisely adopted two. This city also is stated to contain forty-two dwellings, besides fifteen edifices belonging to the government, an old church, and the foundation of a new one. The337 winters are declared to be mild, compared with those of Siberia; but even these are not very inviting, as the snow lies on the ground seven or eight months, and the soil, at the depth of twenty-four to thirty inches, being frozen at all seasons. Potatoes never ripen, cabbages never come to a head, and peas only flower. But the gallant captain adds: “I am certainly the first Englishman that ever married a Kamtschatdale, and my wife is undoubtedly the first native of that peninsula that ever visited happy Britain.”
 
In such a land, there is little hope of cultivating poppy, tobacco, betel, coca, hemp, or thorn-apple; and the poor native would have been compelled to have glided into his grave without a glimpse of Paradise beforehand, if, on the one hand, the kindly Russian pedlar had not found a way to smuggle a little bad spirits into the country, to the great annoyance of all quietly-disposed persons, or, on the other, nature had not promptly supplied an indigenous narcotic, in the form of an unpretending-looking fungus or toadstool, to stimulate the dormant energies of the dwellers in this region of ice and snow.
 
That some kinds of mushrooms are poisonous is a truth of which every farm labourer seems aware. But that some of those which have been reputed poisonous are inert, is beyond their philosophy, and only receives at present the sanction of some of the more scientific, who have directed their studies thitherward. The fly agaric is one of those justly-reputed poisonous species, occasionally found in this country, but which grows plentifully in Kamtschatka and Siberia. A recent author of an account of Russia states,338 “that mushrooms virulently poisonous in one country are eaten with safety in another, is well known in other cases, as, for instance, in that of the fly mushroom (Amanita muscaria), which is common in England, and always poisonous there, while in Kamtschatka it is used as a frequent article of food.” Then he inquires into the reasons wherefore this should be the case:——“It is not enough to say that difference of soil and climate explain the mystery; for though we know that culture changes the properties of plants, converting what is poisonous in the wild state into a wholesome esculent when raised in the garden—as in the case of the common celery, for example—yet throughout the whole of the vegetable kingdom we find almost no other instance of a plant which is poisonous in one country becoming wholesome, without culture, when transplanted to another, and left entirely to itself, and in both placed in apparently the same circumstances as to soil, &c. After all, a great part of the secret may lie, not in the plant, but in the mode of preparing it for the table. So far as we can judge, the Russian cook, on first cutting up these spoils of the forest, makes a much more copious use of salt than is done with us; and the efficacy of this agent in deadening the poisonous quality, is sufficiently proved by the melancholy case recorded in medical treatises, of a French officer and his wife, both of whom died in thirty-two hours after eating certain mushrooms, while the person who supplied them, and his whole family, made a hearty and wholesome meal from the same gathering.” In this case, it appears that while the former took them without addition, the latter first salted them strongly, and then squeezed them well before using them. M. Roques says distinctly that this plant has not its poisonous properties modified by any climate. The Czar Alexis lost his life by eating this mushroom. The details of its effects upon the Kamtschatkans by Krascheminikow, in his natural history of that country are explicit, respecting the delirious intoxication induced by it,339 Gmelin and Pallas also equally certifying its intoxicating powers. Roques reports seven different sets of observations respecting its deleterious effects on man.
 
Unless we accept some such explanation of the phenomena as this, how can we reconcile the fact of their being eaten by the Russians without injury, whilst, on the authority of Dr. Christison, we have such a fatal case as the following, from eating the same kind of fungus, the growth of the same country and climate. Several French soldiers in Russia ate a large quantity of Amanita muscaria, some were not taken ill for six hours and upwards. Four of them who were very powerful men thought themselves safe, because, while their companions were already suffering, they themselves felt perfectly well and refused to take emetics. In the evening they began to complain of anxiety, a sense of suffocation, frequent fainting, burning thirst, and violent gripes. The pulse became small and irregular, and the body bedewed with cold sweat, the lineaments of the countenance were singularly changed, the nose and lips acquiring a violet tint, they trembled much, the belly swelled, and a profuse diarrh?a followed. The extremities soon became livid and cold, and the pain of the abdomen intense, delirium ensued, and all the four died. Two of the others suffered coma for twenty-four hours.
 
This proves that the mushroom in question is possessed of undoubtedly poisonous properties, which are fatal in their effects, unless counteracted or dispelled by the method of preparing them for the table. That this method is known to the Russians and to some other nations, and is believed to consist in well saturating the fungi with salt before cooking them. The Muscovite seems to have no greater dread of ill effects from340 the fly agaric than has the Brazilian from his cassava or mandioca flour, which is prepared from the equally poisonous root of the mandioca plant, the deleterious qualities of which are destroyed by the heat used in its preparation. Dr. Pouchet of Rouen seems to have clearly proved that the poisonous property of the fly agaric and a venenata may be entirely removed by boiling them in water. A quart of water in which five plants had been boiled for fifteen minutes, killed a dog in eight hours; and, again, another in a day; but the boiled fungi themselves had no effect at all on two other dogs; and a third which had been fed for two months on little else than boiled amanitas, not only sustained no harm, but actually got fat on the fare.37 Pouchet is inclined to think that the whole poisonous plants of the family are similarly circumstanced.
 
The most singular circumstance connected with the history of this fungus, is the place it occupies as a substitute for those narcotics known in other parts of the world, and which an ungenial northern climate fails to produce. What the coca is to the Bolivian, and opium to the Chinese—the areca to the Malay, and haschisch to the African—the tobacco to the inhabitants of Europe and America, and the thorn-apple to those of the Andes—is the fly agaric to the natives of Siberia and Kamtschatka. Why it has been called by this............