An article in a late number of the London Medical Times, asserts that all mushrooms are more or less poisonous, and that the washings which they usually undergo in cleansing them, and the subsequent cooking, have the effect of removing the poison, but the water in which they are cooked is pronounced " highly poisonous."

It is surprising what an amount of nonsense is started by papers which ought to know better. Mushrooms are rarely washed, but simply peeled, and then cooked. Gardeners when working among mushrooms, often eat them raw - in quantities. No one was ever known to be injured thereby. In stewing mushrooms the water in which they are cooked is used with the vegetables. No one ever died from eating stewed mushrooms.

There are poisonous sorts of mushrooms, but we are writing of the edible kind.