WARNING - This book is reproduced for its historical interest only, not as a guide to edible fungi. Some fungi that Cooke considered to be edible are now considered not to be so and people who eat them could suffer unpleasant reactions (or worse). Do not eat any fungi unless you are sure of their identity and of their safety and, in any case, when eating a species for the first time, only sample a very small quantity - fungi which many people can eat without adverse effects can make others ill.

Cooke sometimes uses fairly long paragraphs which, if shown at the full width of the browser are difficult to read without getting 'lost in them'. For that reason, the document that follows is formatted to this width which is the approximate width of the original book.

The images have been scanned at 256 colour and 300 d.p.i. and saved in jpg format to save on file-size and make downloading as quick as possible. Unfortunately, this does result in some small loss in image quality. The colours are, in the main, true to the original illustrations and where colours are very different from what would be expected for a particular species the difference lies more with the original illustration than with the scanned image.