345 Mushroom Culture. 



run through the fish, flesh, fowl, frog, and snail departments, m 

 which were fine fat snails huddled together by the bushel. Many an 

 English cultivator would, I am sure, be glad to see his store of these 

 pests pressed into such close quarters. Soon afterwards a cab con- 

 veyed us to the entrance-gate of the horticultural department of the 

 great International Exhibition. Here we feasted our eyes on fruits, 

 vegetables, salads, &c., and also made a close inspection of the fruit- 

 tree department, where many and various methods of training, &c., 

 were displayed. Here were to be seen placed about the vegetable- 

 tents, &c., little mushroom-beds in the form of LiUiputian potato- 

 pits, covered with clusters of mushrooms of good quality, at the 

 sight of which I pulled off my hat and began to rub the dust out 

 of my eyes. Some one close by asks. Have these mushrooms really 

 been produced on those little toy-looking beds ? Oh, yes, there 

 cannot be a doubt of it, for here are buttons bursting up, varying in 

 size from that of a pea to that of a child's halfpenny ball ; and on 

 inspecting them afterwards I found these bunches, which I had 

 first seen as buttons, were open plates, the size of a teacup, some 

 even larger than that. Of course, the character of the materials of 

 which the beds consisted did not escape my observation. I also saw, 

 one evening afterwards, near the Palais Royal, in the window of a 

 splendid restaurant, fine pineapples, melons, pears, grapes, and 

 other fruits, as well as salads, &c., exhibited, and along with them 

 one of these miniature mushroom-beds — aye, and covered over with 

 good mushrooms, too. ' Well,' muttered I, ' what an old goose 

 I am ! after cultivating mushrooms for fifty years, not to have 

 thought of this.' When a boy I used to be sent to a farmer's 

 dunghill in search of mushroom spawn ; and we brought home at 

 times a cartload or so of natural spawn in the shape of lumps, spits, 

 or sods, from mill track, hotbed, or elsewhere, and often it was in 

 a damp state. To secure it for future use, it was placed in sheds to 

 dry slowly ; but on that next the wall, or in damp corners, lots of 

 mushrooms would burst forth, and exhaust the spawn, if not occa- 

 sionally moved about. Some of these lumps and crumbs of spawn 

 placed in boxes, and cased over, set in gentle heat, did, in fact. 



