58 Rhodora [MARCH 
This was all the attention I gave it, except that once in a while 
during the next six weeks I moistened the surface with water at 
about the temperature of my hand, using a watering pot, and trying 
to use about as much water as would fall on that amount of surface 
in a moderate summer shower. I cannot say how many times this 
was done for I kept no notes, but not more than three or four at the 
most. 
Mushrooms appeared in about six and a half weeks and the bed 
continued to bear for about four weeks. At the end of that time I 
put on four inches more loam, when the bed started up again and 
bore for about a fortnight longer. 
I cannot give any figures as,to the quantity of mushrooms gathered. 
It may seem strange that no notes were kept, but the fact is I did not 
enter upon the undertaking in any scientific way, and was not disposed 
to give much care or thought to it; but I thought it would be worth 
while to see whether the cultivation of mushrooms in a cellar was a 
difficult or an easy process. If it had proved difficult I should have 
dropped it at once. All I can say, then, is that there were mush- 
rooms every day and sometimes they were gathered three times a 
day. They were large, fleshy, and of good flavor. No trace of any 
other kind of fungus appeared from first to last. 
As to the difficulty, I never encountered it. Of course it may be 
I was especially favored by good fortune, but the fact that the 
same processes repeated the next year yielded practically identical 
results seem to show that there is no difficulty about it, at least on a 
small scale. It is more than probable that when carried on continu- 
ously and on the large scale complications would arise, and I should 
hesitate myself to undertake it without much more careful study than 
I have ever given to the subject. 
The question is often raised whether the odor from the bed is 
noticeable. In my experiments there was no odor whatever from first 
to last. None could be detected even at the surface of the finished 
bed except the odor of mushrooms after the bed began bearing. 
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS. 
THE YELLOW-FRUITED FORM OF ILEX OPACA AT New BEDFORD, 
MASSACHUSETTS. — Attention was called in RHODORA of December, 
1900, to a new station for the rare yellow-fruited Jex verticillata, 
Gray. During the recent holiday season a collector of evergreens 
