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It were vain, speaking of the mottled amanita, for instance, to allege as a reason the presence of an alkaloid fatal to the grubs, for we should have to ask ourselves why the imperial, the amanita of the Caesars, which is wholly free from poison, is rejected no less uncompromisingly than the venomous species.
Some of them may taste like gall and wormwood, or living and enduring fire, and an occasional specimen may make the experimenter feel briefly unwell, but if he will acquaint himself with the virulent amanita varieties, and shun them, he will not die not from poison. I do not guarantee against indigestion.
"This Amanita," resumed Kennedy, "has a long history, and I may say that few species are quite so interesting. Macerated in milk, it has been employed for centuries as a fly-poison, hence its name. Its deadly properties were known to the ancients, and it is justly celebrated because of its long and distinguished list of victims. Agrippina used it to poison the Emperor Claudius.
"Other affairs call me; and, in my absence, that profound knowledge of chemistry, of which I have had evidence in the past, will enable you to follow with intelligent interest the action of these violet rays upon this exceptionally fine specimen of Siberian amanita muscaria.
He saw it furnish food to mice and deer, so he fashioned the Deathcup Amanita to be like it; and scattered it wherever good mushrooms grew, a trap for the unwary. Tall and shapely is the Deathcup; beautiful to look upon and smelling like a mushroom. But beware of it, a very little is enough, a morsel of the cup; the next night or maybe a day later the poison pangs set in.
"The worst of it is," he continued, "that this Amanita somewhat resembles the royal agaric, the Amanita caesarea. It is, as you see, strikingly beautiful, and therefore all the more dangerous." He ceased a moment, while we looked in a sort of awe at the fatally beautiful thing. "It is not with the fungus that I am so much interested just now, however," Kennedy began again, "but with the poison.
Too late perhaps for medicine to help, and Amanita, the Deathcup, the child of Diablo, has claimed another victim. How shall we know the deadly Amanita among its kindly cousins, the good mushrooms?
It was the amanita, the deadliest and the most widely distributed of the fungi, and the direst of all vegetable poisons to man and beast alike. The alkaloid which it contains takes effect only some hours after its ingestion, when it has entered the blood-streams and begun its disintegrating action upon the red corpuscles. The dogs must have partaken of it on the preceding afternoon.
Many years ago scientists analyzed its poisonous alkaloids and found what they called bulbosine. Later it was named muscarin, and now is sometimes known as amanitin, since it is confined to the mushrooms of the Amanita genus. "Amanitin is a wonderful and dangerous alkaloid, which is absorbed in the intestinal canal. It is extremely violent.
You, in England, are familiar with the death of the common house-fly which is found attached to the window-pane by a coating of white mold. I have developed the spores of this mold and have produced a giant species. Observe the interesting effect of the strong light upon my orange and blue amanita fungus!" Hard beside me I heard Nayland Smith groan, Weymouth had become suddenly silent.
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