182 HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 
The Cuarrman. That is the scientific reason? 
Mr. Woops. Yes. The tropical laboratory is located at Miami, Fla. 
There we are propagating and carrying on everything in reference to 
seeding and plant production that is required to be handled in a sub- 
tropical climate. We are studying there the tomato diseases and 
diseases of crops in the southwestern Gulf State region. We are 
spending down there about $5,700, including salaries of men, and we 
want an increase for that work of about $2,000, making a total down 
there of $7,700. 
Now, one other line of work which has never been developed to 
any extent in this country, and lies along this line of producing a 
greater supply of food, is the question of growing mushrooms. The 
mushroom is a fungus that lives upon decaying organic matter, and in 
Europe the cultivation of mushrooms for food has been developed to 
an extremely high point. It is one of the main food products of 
France and Bagtunt and Russia and Germany. In this country it is 
a growing industry. We introduce in this country over 85,000,000 
pounds of mushrooms, and we introduce many thousands of tons of 
spawn, and the mushrooms bring a high price in our market. The 
difficulty has been we have to buy our spawn abroad; we have to 
bring it from Europe. They have been trying to make it in this 
country, but they have not succeeded. And another thing which 
Europeans have never accomplished, and something which has never 
been accomplished before in the world, is the cultivation of the wild 
mushrooms commercially. 
It seemed to us that that was an industry which was applicable to 
large regions. For instance, in Pennsylvania and in West Virginia, 
in the coal sections where they have exhausted large coal mines, and 
places that are of no special value like that are just exactly the places 
to grow mushrooms. So we undertook the proposition, to see if we 
could not perfect the method of producing spawn—that is, the seed of 
the mushroom—so it would become a commercial proposition, and that 
we could grow some of the several thousands of the edible varieties 
that grow in our country. They grow wild everywhere, but there 
are a lot of poisonous ones that make it dangerous for anybody but 
an expert to select these mushrooms. I can say this, that we have 
discovered the means of growing the spawn of any mushroom, and we 
can produce the mushroom spawn. ere is some [indicating] that is 
the spawn of a wild mushroom that grows wild in Missouri, and that 
is the first wild mushroom spawn that has ever been produced any- 
where in the world commercially. 
The CHarrMan. We find our wild mushrooms growing in the old 
pastures ¢ 
Mr. Woops. That is the edible mushrooms, yes. They are culti- 
vated throughout the world. 
‘The Caarrman. Yes. Now, if I sow this spawn in those pastures 
will I get results? 
_Mr. Woops. No; you would not. You will see this is a cobweb- 
like substance, and when it once produces a cap it exhausts itself. 
The Cuarrman. It needs renewing? 
Mr. Woops. Yes; it is extremely difficult to hold that up to its pro- 
ducing power, but we have a method by which we can do it, and we 
can produce very quickly the commercial spawn of any mushroom 
anyone wants. That is some of the spawn we have produced [exhibit- 
ing the spawn to the committee]. 
