TOADSTOOLS AND THEIR KINDRED. 



139 



garden. Knowing its value, and being particularly fond of it when fried for 

 breakfast, he was anxious to secure its permanence. Tbe spot on which the 

 specimens appeared was marked off and guarded, so that it was never desecrated 

 by the spade, and the soil remained consequently undisturbed. So long as he 

 resided on the premises, he counted upon and gathered several specimens of the 

 puff-ball, the mycelium continuing to produce them year after year. Burying a 

 ripe specimen in similar soil, and watering the ground with an infusion of fresh 

 specimens, has been tried without success." 



Fig. 10. Faiey-kixg Champignon {Marasmius oreades). 



Mushroom-growing, as carried on in some parts of France, is so 

 extraordinary as to deserve mention. In the vicinity of Paris there 

 are extensive caves formed by stone-quarries long since abandoned. 

 In these caves, sixty or seventy feet underground, and extending 

 great distances, the temperature is equal and the air moist, and here 

 mushroom-beds are made, and immense quantities of the plant are 

 grown for home and foreign markets. An idea of the magnitude of 

 tiie business may be formed when it is known that one proprietor has 

 twenty-one miles of beds, another sixteen, another seven, and so on 

 through a long list. In the ramifications of the cave of Montrouge 

 (Fig. 11), just outside the fortifications of Paris, there are six or seven 

 miles' run of mushroom-beds. It is entered through a circular open- 

 ing, like the mouth of a well, and tlie only mode of descent is down 

 a shaky pole, furnished with cross-bars, the base of which rests iu 

 darkness sixty feet below. 



A gentleman who visited this cave remarks : 



" I had an idea that one might enter sideways in a more agreeable manner, 

 but it was not so. Down the shaky pole my guide creeps, I follow, and soon 

 reach the bottom, from which little passages radiate. A few little lamps, fixed 

 on pointed sticks, are placed below, and, arming ourselves with one each, we 

 slowly commence exploring dark, still, tortuous passages. ... On each hand 

 are little narrow beds of lialf-decomposed stable-manure running along the wall, 

 that have not yet been spawned. . . . "Wherever the rocky subway became as 

 large as a small bedroom, two or three little beds were placed parallel to each 

 other. They are about twenty inches high, and were dotted all over with mush- 



