206 



MUSHROOM. 



smell: further, the noxious kind grows in woods, or on the 

 margins of woods, while the true mushroom springs up 

 chieily in open pastures, and should be gathered only in 

 such places." 



Mr. Armstrong gives the following directions for culti- 

 vating the garden mushroom : — Prepare a bed, early in 

 October, either in a corner of the hot-house, if you have 

 one, or a dry and warm cellar. The width of the bed at 

 bottom should not be less than four feet, and its length in 

 proportion to the spawn provided. Its sides should rise 

 perpendicularly one foot, and should afterwards decrease to 

 the centre, forming four sloping surfaces. W e need hardly 

 say that the material of the bed at this stage of the busi- 

 ness must be horse-dung, well forked, and pressed together 

 to prevent its settling unequally. It should then be cover- 

 ed with long straw, as well to exclude frost as to keep in 

 the volatile parts of the mass, which vv^ould otherwise 

 escape. After ten days, the temperature of the bed will bei 

 sufhciently moderated, when the straw is to be removed^ 

 and a covering of good mould, to the depth of an inch, laid 

 over the dung. On this the seed or spawn of the mushn 

 room [which are threads or fibres of a white colour, found 

 in old pasture-grounds, in masses of rotten horse-dung, 

 sometimes under stable-floors, and frequently in the re^i 

 mains of old hot-beds] is to be placed in rows, six inches 

 apart, occupying all the sloping parts of the bed, which is 

 again to be covered with a second inch of fresh mould and 

 a coat of straw. If your bed has been well constructed, 

 your mushrooms will be fit for use at the end of five or 

 six weeks, and will continue to be productive for several 

 months. Should you, however, in the course of the win- 

 ter, find its productiveness diminished, take off nearly all 

 the original covering, and replace it with eight or ten inch- 

 es of fresh dung and a coat of clean straw. This, by 

 creating a new heat, will revive the action of the spawn, 

 and give a long succession of mushrooms." — Mem. of 

 F". Board of Agr. vol. ii. p. 125. 



Use, — The garden mushroom is eaten fresh, either stew- 

 ed or boiled ; and preserved as a pickle, or in powder, or 

 dried whole. The sauce, commonly called ketchup (sup- 

 posed, by Martyn, from the Japanese, kit-jap) is or ought 

 'o be made from its juice with salt and spices. Wild 

 iiiushrooms from old pastures are generally considered as 

 more delicate in flavour, and more tender in flesh, than 

 tliose raised in artificial beds. But the young or butter 



