VEGETABLE AND FRUIT MARKETS. 371 



must be beaten with the mallet, like the dung, quite smooth and 

 hard all over. In eight days after spawning, the bed will be 

 covered with a whitish substance, which shows that the spawn 

 is running all through it, and that the heat is right. 



&quot; Mushrooms generally appear in six weeks after making the 

 bed, if the temperature of the house is kept from 55 to 60. 

 They are very impatient of too much water and water is 

 required to be put on them only with a fine watering-pot rose ; 

 and that when the bed gets dry ; and it should be always of the 

 same temperature as the house, or it chills all the young ones, 

 and the crop never lasts so long. If hot-water pipes are used to 

 heat the house, there is no occasion for watering. We generally 

 make fresh beds every month, to keep up a succession all 

 through the year, excepting the months they come naturally in 

 the open fields. 



&quot; Mushrooms may be grown in winter in a dark cellar, where 

 there is no artificial heat, by covering the top of the ridges, or 

 box, with good dry hay, at least ten inches thick. They will 

 not come in so quickly as in a house kept at a steady temper 

 ature, but will keep in bearing a great deal longer, so that one 

 good bed will last all through. As a good deal of the success of 

 growing mushrooms depends on the goodness of the spawn, it is 

 necessary to get it from some respectable nurserymen, who gen 

 erally sell it in the shape of bricks. Its quality may easily be 

 ascertained, if good, by breaking it, and seeing it full of white 

 threads, and the smell is exactly like a mushroom. If it smells 

 musty, it has lost its vegetative powers. It will keep good for a 

 year or two, if kept dry, and out of the power of frost. The 

 best is made in London about Battersea, where many cows and 

 horses are pastured in the fields. The old droppings are taken 

 from the surface where the natural mushrooms grow, and mixed 

 with fresh horse-dung, and cut into the shape of bricks. There 

 is always good spawn in the old beds, which may be preserved 

 to put into new ones.&quot; 



I have gone thus fully into this, as it may appear to some, 

 unimportant subject, because, as a vegetable, this plant is es 

 teemed a great delicacy ; and next, because of the great quan 

 tities of ketchup which are used, and which may be manufac 

 tured in the country, and of which mushrooms are the principal 

 material. 



