104 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



I have two cellars, each forty-two feet long by nineteen feet 

 wide and seven feet to the ceiling, with six ventilators in each, 

 which I find very necessary when making up the beds, to allow the 

 steam to escape. One bed is built on the floor and the other on 

 a shelf, so that I have about nine hundred and eighty square feet 

 in each cellar. 



The first crop I raised, two years ago, I described in " Garden- 

 ing," last April (1893), page 227, and have nothing to add to it. 

 I have two thousand square feet in bearing since last November, 

 and up to this date I have not cut as many pounds as I did off my 

 cellar then referred to, with only seven hundred and thirty square 

 feet. 



Prices this year have been very poor, and there is an immense 

 supply of nuishrooms in the market. I am told that my mush- 

 rooms are as fine as any in the market, yet I have received as low 

 as twenty-five cents per pound for them, and my average to date 



is only fifty cents. 



John Peck. 



I have here another valuable letter, from Mr. A. H. Withington, 

 now in the orange business in Florida ; but previous to this 

 season he had been engaged, on a considerable scale, in truck 

 gardening, berry raising, and mushroom growing at South Amboy, 

 N. J., for the New York market. He writes me : — 



Florida, February 4, 1894. 



In regard to mushrooms, the average price last year was about 

 seventy-five cents per pound, but they fluctuated from one dollar 

 down to twenty cents per pound, according to supply and demand. 

 We always found they sold best in February, just before Lent, 

 and after Lent in April. Sixteen years ago I sold them as high 

 as two dollars and fifty cents per pound, through commission 

 merchants. I think the best way to sell them is through commis- 

 sion men, when one has a great many. At the same time we can 

 get a little higher prices for the best mushrooms, from fancy fruit 

 stores and markets. We never sold to hotels or restaurants, and 

 didn't care for their trade. 



I don't think we ever grew a pound of mushrooiiis tliat did not 

 cost us from forty to fifty cents per pound to grow. Now, as so 

 many have gone into tlieir culture, lower [)rices must prevail. It 



