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To make them generally popular three things are necessary, namely, to 
increase the supply, moderate the price, and bring them before the 
notice ot the people. It mushrooms could be obtained at moderate 
prices, the demand would increase tenfold at once. A Philadelphia 
gentleman writes that one tiling we have pressing need for is a good 
distributing agency in every good city. If Philadelphia were properly 
canvassed by a well-equipped company for distributing the product of 
the growers direct to the consumers, it would use twenty times as many 
mushrooms as it now does. There are a few commission fruit men there 
who have most of the business and cater to some of the hotels, but the 
enormous host of well-to-do people are not approached at all. These 
well-to-do people are lamentably ignorant of the delicious morsel and 
need educating to the gastronomic delights they are missing by not 
having fresh mushrooms frequently on their tables. The cooks also 
need educating, for few of them can cook mushrooms. When improp¬ 
erly cooked they are tough, leathery, dry, and tasteless; when properly 
cooked they are the most delicious morsels in the vegetable kingdom, 
with an aroma to tempt the gods. 
As now grown mushrooms are a somewhat uncertain crop. We may 
have the most extravagant success one year and only partial success 
the next, and yet, so far as we know, the materials, preparation, and 
care were the same in both cases. Now we must discover, first, what 
caused the success, that we may stick to it; and, secondly, what caused 
the failure, that we may avoid it. No one should attempt to grow mush¬ 
rooms who has not a good place—shed, cellar, greenhouse, stable, or the 
like—and only the best materials should be used, that is, good fresh 
horse manure, cleau, sweet loam, and a superior spawn. The most vital 
point is the preparation of the manure, which should be moist but never 
wet, and above all should not burn or u fire-fang.” 
It is just as easy to grow mushrooms on a small scale for home use as 
it is to grow flowers or strawberries and comparatively with no more 
expense. In fact, when we do the work ourselves we do not reckon 
any expense, and we reap a delicious luxury for our pains. Charles L. 
Hill, of San Francisco, who has a large canning factory, has in connec¬ 
tion with it what he calls a u mushroom factory,” which consists of 
ranges of sheds filled with beds. His object in starting it was to have 
something to can in winter. His houses are so arranged that he does 
the work of loading and unloading the manure by machinery, and runs 
it in and out of the houses on little railroad cars. The only drawback 
to raising mushrooms in summer is that they are then attacked by flies 
which produce maggots. The bowels of the earth, as in caves and aban¬ 
doned quarries, are inhospitable places to this pest, and mushrooms 
can as well be grown in them in summer as in winter. In the village 
of Akron, about 30 miles from Buffalo, N. Y., are tunnels from which 
stone has been taken to make hydraulic cement and which have been 
utilized for growing mushrooms. The largest and most successful 
