VOL. XLII.] ^PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. J IQ 



mushroom beds in their cellars, with a mixture of fine mould, and the parings 

 of mushrooms laid upon dung ; and that of our gardeners, who water their beds 

 with water, in which such parings are soaked ; but by supposing, that their 

 success was owing to minute seeds lodged and retained in such parings, and 

 washed off by such infusions. So also, as to the mouldiness of old dung and 

 thatch, which the gardeners are very fond of in making their mushroom beds, 

 he apprehended, that this mouldiness was not the nutritive juice or salt proper 

 for the production of this plant, but the mushroom itself in its early and incep- 

 tive state. Some warm rains enabled him to reduce his conjectures to a cer- 

 tainty; by which he not only discovered, that this mouldiness is a collection 

 of little mushrooms adhering to each other by minute fibres, or, as the gar- 

 deners in other cases call them, runners ; but he discovered and preserved the 

 seed of mushrooms. 



He had prepared for his observations, by ordering the gardener to make a 

 mushroom bed, in a well-sheltered place, after the usual manner ; which was 

 finished about 6 weeks without any appearance of shoots. But a few days after 

 that, a great plenty appeared above-ground, among the asparagus, and on the 

 grass walks, as indeed he expected, because on the night before there had fallen 

 4-|. of an inch of rain, which, together with an unusual height of the thermo- 

 meter, for the season, made it the most suitable weather for mushrooms. He 

 immediately chose out the most promising plants, which he covered with bell- 

 glasses ; where there were several together, and the single plants with little 

 hand-glasses, which he had made for the preservation of wall-fruit. 



Soon after he carefully gathered about a dozen mushrooms, of the esculent 

 kind, from under the glasses ; choosing such as gradually differed from each 

 other in the colour of their gills, from a faint peach-bloom colour, to a deep 

 purple ; thinking that as he had got the mushroom, in its several states, se- 

 cured by these glasses from the injury of the weather, he should be able to dis- 

 cover the seed. 



With these he gathered several mushrooms of another kind, commonly 

 known by the name of Champignons ; which also he had secured under glasses. 

 With these he began, and soon found, that the gills, as they are called, are no 

 other than capsulas, or pods for the seed; for with one of the lower magnifiers, 

 and a fine penknife, he could easily divide them from adhering to each other. 

 This encouraged him to apply directly to the larger sort of mushrooms ; and 

 accordingly he fixed on one of a deep flesh colour, which he thought was in 

 its prime. He began with one of the gills carefully separated from the head, or 

 stool, without bruising ; but could discover nothing in it like seeds, except 

 that here and there there were some globular dark spots, appearing, througli 



