The Wagner Free Institute of Science acquired its set of 28 mushrooms well over a century ago, but they haven't lost their color – and no, they don't stink. The collection is still in good shape despite its age and simple storage thanks to the fungi's unique matter: Each bulb is made of papier-mâché.

These hollow mushrooms were models designed to show foragers which species were safe to eat, and which ones would kill them. Dr. Louis Auzoux mass-produced them and papier-mâché replicas of beetles, horses and human bodies in the 1800s at his factory in the tiny French village of Saint-Aubin-d'Ecrosville to provide a more effective and affordable teaching tool than wax models. It's especially fitting that a set of his landed at Philadelphia's Wagner Free Institute of Science, a monument to th

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