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Excerpt from: INTRODUCTION-GENERAL STATEMENTS. Many articles on mushrooms have recently appeared in periodicals in this country, from which it is evident that there is a desire on the part of many persons to obtain information concerning them. It has, therefore, seemed good to me to tell what little 1 know about the subject, even at the risk of taking up what may appear to some a matter already well discussed. I am the more strongly inclined to do this because of numerous private appeals to me for information of this character, and because no single periodical can hope to reach all the people in this vast country who desire information on such an interesting topic. Besides, no single writer is likely to exhaust the subject, or to tell all that should be known concerning it; what one may omit another may express, and in this way general knowledge may be increased. The times seem auspicious for such an undertaking, for with much depression in financial and business circles, with lack of employment and the reduction in wages now taking place, anything that promises to cheapen the cost of living or add to the means of subsistence of the unemployed or of those employed on short time or at low wages, must possess a peculiar interest. "Hard times" may now and then compel us to look into Nature's bountiful storehouse for a supplementary supply of food. And Nature, almost always lavish in her gifts, has indeed provided a bountiful supply, which in this country has been greatly overlooked and almost entirely neglected until very recent years. Mushrooms have been, and still are, much more largely consumed in Europe than in this country. In China also, where, with her teeming population, the cost of living seems to be reduced almost to its minimum, they are extensively used. China itself does not supply its own demand for them, and therefore they import large quantities from Japan and other islands of the Pacific ocean. In some of the cities of Europe