Mushroom Culture. 247 



produce many good dishes of mushrooms. Also under the footpath 

 trellises of early vineries and peach-houses I have seen lots of 

 natural spawn placed and covered, from which mushrooms were 

 gathered at the commencement of forcing, when the heat was only 

 moderate. Notwithstanding, however, these hints, received from 

 nature herself, blindness continued, and no idea whatever occurred 

 to me that this useful esculent could be so easily produced for the 

 million as I now find it can be. Let me now state the fact that the 

 little French mushroom-beds consisted of flakes or sods of fine 

 natural spawn cut out of the stable dung-heap, encased in a light- 

 coloured, loamy, muddy soil — not, however, battered, rammed, or 

 trodden hard, as is usual with us, but laid over the surface to about 

 the same thickness as that of an ordinary mushroom-bed, and left 

 a little loose and knobbly — an advantageous condition as far as 

 watering is concerned. 



'•'As regards mushroom-growing, my mind was, however, 

 not yet exactly at ease, so I kept rummaging about day after 

 day in my gardening tours through royal and other extensive 

 forcing grounds. Where there was a good deal of stable-dung, 

 I always noticed the smell of mushroom spawn, and the dung 

 placed in tidy-shaped heaps full of it. This seemed to me to be 

 very generally the case, and that from these heaps any quantity 

 of fine, strong, natural spawn could be cut out in flakes or sods of 

 any size or thickness, for laying on the floors of caves, cellars, 

 or sheds, or on mushroom-house shelves. Mushrooms could 

 thus be cultivated in any cave or cellar, old box, tea chest, or 

 the like. 



" How is it that this beautiful, strong, natural mushroom spawn 

 is so abundant in France ? Can it be because entire horses are the 

 rule there, not the exception, as with us ? Let us suppose a quan- 

 tity of natural mushroom spawn to be discovered in a dunghill, 

 hotbed, mill track, &c. Atmospheric influence prevents this body 

 of spawn from being utilized where it is found. The custom, 

 therefore, has been, on discovering such useful treasure, to collect 

 as much of it as retains its freshness and full natural properties, in 



