(First Edition)

A MICRO-BIOLOGY unit at a leading London hospital medical school has remained closed for five months after an accident involving dangerous fungi, on the order of the Health and Safety Executive, writes Celia Hall.

MANY of the chemicals traditionally used as wood preservatives are now known to cause environmental damage when the wood is discarded. Some chemical preservatives have been restricted and total bans are possible in the future.

Anyone driving around Kentucky and adjoining states is bound to notice the lush green of much of the turf and pasture land. It is the colour of tall fescue, a grass that grows vigorously to produce stunning green swards and is exceptionally resistant to attack by insects and nematode worms. It also survives well in areas subject to drought and in soil depleted of nutrients.

TAKE a trip to the New Forest this weekend and you will see scores of eager mushroom-pickers, bent double in their efforts to locate a tasty cep, Shaggy Parasol or Horn of Plenty. This month is the peak of the mushroom season - and with more rainfall than usual this autumn, enthusiasts expect a bumper crop.

DOWN IN the meadows by the stream there is a fair scattering of what I take to be shaggy ink-caps - elegant, tall, slender mushrooms which come up beautifully white but in a day or two turn black in the gills, and then sink down to become puddles of slimy liquid dark as pitch.

KAVAJE - Albania is the sort of place that makes surrealists weep for joy. It is possible that in other countries waiters park their bicycles in hotel restaurants, but surely not when the restaurant is indoors on an upper floor? Such, however, is the practice at the Hotel Tirana in Albania's capital.

KATHRYN BRAHAM, aged three, was walking her dog Hilly, a five-month-old spaniel, in Oxleas Wood yesterday, writes John Arlidge. Her parents, Alan and Lynne, had told her that the planned route through the wood had been scrapped.

Sir: I can ony presume that your home affairs editor temporarily lost control of his senses to publish Michael Prestage's expose of the 'magic mushrooms' season (26 September).

STOP PRESS. In the same spirit that each and every cigarette packet and American wine bottle must carry health warnings, it is not only prudent to repeat cautionary words before we print this week's column on cooking with mushrooms: it is necessary.

Sir: The over-picking of wild fungi (letter, 14 September) is not as dangerous as the over-picking of wild flowers, for the simple reason that fungi, unlike flowers, reproduce by means of spores (which are shed by the cap of the ripe plant) and mycelium (minute underground threads). Indeed, the mushroom-picker's basket and boots are more likely to increase the areas in which the fungi grow, rather than inhibit them.

Sir: Last Friday, you reported plans by the Crown Estates to fell an 'untidy' avenue of old trees in Windsor Great Park ('Royal tree- felling plan divides conservationists', 11 September). Your article rightly stressed that mature trees in centuries-old parkland are host to a number of rare species of insects and fungi requiring the continuity provided by this environment and not found elsewhere.

Sir: Before I go out on a fungus foray, prompted by your report ('Bumper mushroom crop fails to whet appetite', 10 September), can someone reassure me that there is no danger of over-picking fungi? Wild flowers are better off unpicked; it seems curious that it is a free-for-all for fungi.

THE CREAM of Europe's mushroom experts scratched and nosed their way through an English wood yesterday in search of fungi to whet their appetite.