GKOWING MUSHROOMS IN MUSHROOM HOUSES. 37 



crop of mushrooms in that house as one could wish to 

 look at. 



The interior arrangement of the mushroom house 

 may resemble that of the mushroom cellar. Beds may 

 be made alongside of the walls and, if tiiere is room, 

 also along the middle of the house, and shelves erected 

 in the same way as in the cellar. But in the case of 

 cold, thin outside walls, the shelf-beds should not be 

 built close against them, but instead boxed off about two 

 inches from the walls, so as to remove the beds from the 

 chilling touch of the wall in winter. Economy may 

 suggest the advisability of high mushroom houses, so 

 that one may be able to build one shelf above another, 

 until the shelves are two, three, or four deep. But this 

 is a mistake. The artificial heat required to maintain a 

 temperature of 55° in midwinter in a house built high 

 above ground would be too parching and unsteady for 

 the good of the mushrooms ; besides, a second shelf is 

 inconvenient enough,' and when it comes to a third or a 

 fourth the inconvenience would be too great, and over- 

 reach any advantage hoped for in economy of space. 

 An unheated mushroom house must be regarded as a 

 shed, and treated similarly, as described in the following 

 chapter. 



In large, well appointed, private gardens, a mushroom 

 house is considered an almost indispensable adjunct to 

 the glasshouse establishment, and is generally built 

 against the north-facing wall of a gi-eenhouse. In this 

 way it gets the benefit of the warm wall, and may be 

 easily heated by introducing one or two hot-water pipes 

 from the greenhouse system ; besides, in winter the 

 house may be entered from the glass house or adjacent 

 shed, and in this way be exempted from the inclement 

 breath of the frosty air that would be admitted in open- 

 ing the outside door. 



Mr. Samuel Henshaw's Mushroom House — Mr. 



