INSECT AND OTHER ENEMIES. 131 



the gills to the fleshy caps. Rats are far more destruc- 

 tive than mice. Trapping is the only remedy I use, and 

 •would not use poison in tlie mushroom houses for these 

 creatures for ohvious reasons. But we should make our 

 houses secure against their inroads. 



Toads. — These are recommended as good insect traps 

 to he used in mushroom houses, but I do not want them 

 there ; the euro is as bad as the disease. The mushroom 

 bed is a little paradise for the toad. He gets upon it 

 and burrows or elbows out a snug little hole for himself 

 wherever he wishes, and many of them, too, and cares 

 nothing about whether, in his efforts to make himself 

 comfortable, he has heaved out the finest clumps of 

 young mushrooms in the beds. 



Fogging Off. — This is one of the commonest ail- 

 ments peculiar to cultivated mushrooms. It consists in 

 the softening, shriveling, and perishing of part of the 

 young mushrooms, which also usually assume a brown- 

 ish color. These withered mushrooms do not occur 

 singly here and there over the face of the bed, but in 

 patches ; generally all or nearly all of the very small 

 mushrooms in a clump will turn brown and soft, and 

 there is no help for them ; they never will recover their 

 plumpness. Some writers attribute fogging off to un- 

 favorable atmospheric conditions, — ^the temperature may 

 be too cold, or too hot, or the atmosphere too moist, or 

 too dry. I am convinced that fogging off is due to the 

 destruction of the mycelium threads that supported 

 these mushrooms; it is a disease of the "root," to use 

 this expression; the "roots" having been killed, the 

 tops must necessarily perish. If it were caused by un- 

 favorable conditions above ground we should expect all 

 of the crop to be more or less injuriously affected ; but 

 this does not occur; the mushrooms in one clump may 

 be withered, and contiguous clumps perfectly healthy. 



Anything that will kill the spawn or mycelium threads 



