JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER . 
418 
Bummer, with plenty of atmospheric moisture. The night 
temperature should be about 70°, and in the afternoon the heat 
may rise to 90° with advantage at closing time ; in the winter 
from 60° to 70° will be sufficient.—W. K. 
MUSHROOMS FOR THE MILLION. 
(Continued from, page 360.) 
PREPARING THE MANURE-FAULTY METHODS. 
In preparing manure for Mushroom beds, two what 
may be termed extreme practices have been more or 
less generally advocated, and one of them has been 
extensively adopted. These practices will be men¬ 
tioned in order that they may be avoided, for both are 
faulty. The first and very common plan is to gather 
horse droppings from the stables daily, excluding all 
straw from them. By this mode, if there are few 
horses, a considerable time elapses before sufficient 
material is obtained for a bed. In the meantime the 
droppings are spread as thinly as possible in a shed, 
and at least a portion of them become so dry that there 
is little virtue left in them ; and even if the mycelium 
spreads through the beds, the resulting crops are light, 
the Mushrooms small, and the gatherings few. On 
this old exhaustive process of preparing the manure, 
Mr. Gilbert of Burgliley, a most successful grower of 
Mushrooms both in houses and the open air, remarks 
with great force, “ To gather horse droppings, then lay 
them in a shed, dry them and turn them till there is 
no strength left in them, and then to expect Mushrooms, 
is to me something like madness.” If, on the other 
hand, droppings are plentiful and enoitgli is gathered 
in a short time for use, the material after sundry turn¬ 
ings is formed into a bed. In the majority of cases 
the heat is generated quickly and violently, and very 
frequently holes are made all over the bed with a 
dibber to reduce the temperature, which holes also 
serve as receptacles for lumps of spawn when the heat 
has subsided. This is not a sound mode of procedure, 
and i r productive and long-lasting beds follow it is 
more the result of chance than of good management. 
The only really satisfactory reflection in connection 
with such beds is that it is somewhat difficult to pre¬ 
vent Mushrooms growing when good spawn is plentiful, 
and therefore, when similar spawn is placed in a suit¬ 
able medium, good crops are easily produced. 
The la-U-named system is unsound in two respects. 
First, it is in the nature of fermenting materials that 
heat quickly and violently to cool rapidly and suddenly, 
the inevitable result being that the bed is at first far 
too hot, and the means taken to cool it deprives it of 
its virtues—ammonia—and it is afterwards too cold 
for the requirements of the crop, and the Mushroom 
supply, if a supply follows, is necessarily of short 
duration. Secondly, when spawn is inserted in a 
smooth hole made with a dibber, and consequently 
tapering to a point, it is impossible that an angular 
substance can completely occupy the space that has 
been thus provided. There must at least be a cavity 
below the spawn, and there vapour, not always sweet, 
accumulates and prevents the growth of the mycelium. 
Much experience has shown that cultivators have too 
often to depend on w r eak and inferior spawn, but the 
samo experience has also shown conclusively that much 
good spawn has been spoiled by the practice indicated. 
This ancient, tedious, and elaborate mode of collecting 
and preparing the manure is wrong in principle. Still 
[ May 25, 1882. 
it may be urged that many good Mushroom beds have 
resulted from it. No doubt this is so, but failures have 
been still more numerous, and any practice that pro¬ 
duces more blanks than prizes is essentially faulty. 
The evils of overheating incident to the above process 
have been frequently mitigated, and sometimes averted, 
by mixing soil with the manure, and other methods 
that are known to cultivators; but it is not for these— 
the few—that these remarks are intended, but for the 
far greater number—those on the one hand who know 
a little about the subject of Mushroom culture but not 
enough for insuring good beds always, and on the 
other that still greater body who know nothing about 
the practice, yet who have the means at disposal, 
and only need the skill for producing crops of great 
value. The object is to afford sound guidance for these 
by first stating errors that they may be avoided, and 
then submitting instructions as plainly and clearly as 
possible, that they may be followed with a fair prospect 
if not an absolute assurance of success accruing. 
UNPURIFIED MANURE. 
The next practice for avoidance is what may be 
termed the rough-and-ready one of first placing the 
manure, short straw and droppings, in a heap to heat, 
and when fermentation is brisk turning it over once or 
twice at the most, and then forming it into beds. Even 
if good crops of Mushrooms have followed, the practice 
is, notwithstanding, unsafe, and the material must have 
been specially sweet to begin with by previous fer¬ 
mentation and disturbance. The mycelium of the 
fungus will not permeate an impure medium. No 
plant requires purer and sweeter fare than the Mush¬ 
room does. Some other kinds of fungi will luxuriate 
in the most offensive matter, indeed such is essential 
to them, but this is certainly not one of them. If the 
manure of which a bed is made is in the slightest degree 
repulsive to the operator it will undoubtedly prove 
detrimental to the crop he is hoping to secure. So 
dainty is the Mushroom that it selects the healthiest, 
sweetest pastures for its home, and even soil that con¬ 
tains fresh manure is unsuitable for surfacing the beds. 
Avoid, then, on the one hand the old over-dried straw- 
excluded dropping-system, and on the other the use of 
rank materials resulting from insufficient turning and 
sweetening, and over-haste in making up the beds. 
CORRECT PRACTICES. 
Having submitted systems that should be avoided, 
endeavour shall now be made to detail the method 
that should be adopted in preparing manure for Mush¬ 
rooms. Bearing in mind that the manure must be 
procured from those stables where the horses are fed 
chiefly or entirely with hard dry food, let it be pre¬ 
pared as follows—the object being the formation of 
beds either in the open air or in houses. Let the manure 
be gathered precisely as the grooms remove it from the 
stalls. By far the greater bulk of it will be straw more 
or less stained ; still, exclude none of this straw, for any 
portion of it that may not be w r anted for fermentation 
will serve a very important purpose. On the arrival of 
the stable refuse at the preparing ground let it be 
forked over, casting aside the long and comparatively 
clean straw only, such as in itself will generate but 
little heat if placed in a moderate-sized heap; the re¬ 
mainder, which may consist of from one-half straw and 
one-lialf droppings to two-thirds of the former and one- 
