Important: Safety Warning
This page offers rules for telling edible mushrooms from poisonous ones. No such rules are reliable, and these identifications predate modern mycology. Deadly species closely resemble edible ones, and mistakes are regularly fatal. Never eat a wild mushroom on the strength of this text.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Home › Tests Or Reagents › To Test Slates
To Test Slates
The test of a superior slate is its ability to remain unbroken, after being made red hot in a furnace and suddenly immersed in cold water while 4386. Το Test Silver or Gold. For testing gold or silver, slightly wet the metal and rub gently with lunar caustic. If genuine gold or silver the mark will be faint; but if an inferior metal it will be quite black. 4380. To Detect Adulterations in Sugar. Sugar is largely adulterated. Pure at that heat. cane and beet sugars may be known by their solutions bending the luminous rays in cirin circumpolarization to the right, whereas grape and fecula sugars bend it to the left. Pure cane sugar boiled in a solution of caustic potassa remains colorless, but if starch sugar is present the liquid turns brown. A filtered 4387. Το Test Mushrooms. The following are said to be tests of the wholesomesolution of 33 grains cane or beet sugar in 1 ness of mushrooms: Sprinkle a little salt on ounce water, mixed with 3 grains pure caustic the spongy part or gills of the sample to be potassa, and then agitated with 15 grains sultried if they turn yellow, they are poisonphate of copper in a close vessel, remains ous; if black, they are wholesome.
False mushrooms have a warty cap, or else clear, even after the lapse of several days; but if starch sugar is present, a red precipi- fragments of membrane adhering to the upper tate is formed after some time, and if present surface; are heavy, and emerge from a vulva in considerable quantity the copper will be or bag; they grow in tufts or clusters in wholly converted into oxide within 24 hours; woods, on the stumps of trees, &c. whereas the solution first turns blue or green, and then the true mushrooms grow in pastures.
False mushrooms have an astringent, entirely loses its color. Of late years moist sugar has been largely adulterated with the styptic, and disagreeable taste; when cut sweet waste liquor (solution of glycerine) of the stearine manufactories; but this fraud may be detected by its inferior sweetness, and by its moist and dirty appearance. they turn blue; they are moist on the surface, and are generally of a rose or orange color.
The gills of the true mushroom are of a pinky red, changing to a liver color; the flesh