THE NATURALIST AND COLLECTOR 
73 
riiishfoom Culture. 
f[S many■ enquiries have been re- 
jJl ceived relating- to the best 
methods of cultivating- Mush¬ 
rooms, we have deemed it advisable to 
run this sketch in place of our regular 
article. It is clipped from the Phila¬ 
delphia Record, and treats the subject 
in a comprehensible style: It seems 
very strange that so little is known of 
the mushroom industry, which in 
America is a product of the last decade. 
The men who make a business of grow¬ 
ing mushrooms for the market, of 
whom there are quite a number in the 
vicinity of Philadelphia, realize that 
they have a good thing, and the greater 
the secrecy surrounding the industry 
the better it is for them. They con¬ 
sequently guard their various methods 
jealously, although within the past 
two or three years many wealthy res¬ 
idents of the suburbs who have stables, 
and gardeners, and greenhouses, have 
taken up the culture of mushrooms, 
and have met with gratifying results 
in their experiments. The curious 
little vegetable, for it is classed in that 
category, thrives best in the dark, or 
at least away from the sunlight, and 
many people have recently established 
mushroom beds in the cellars of their 
city homes. 
William Falconer, who is perhaps 
the best authority on mushroom cul¬ 
ture in America, says: “In the most 
prosperous and progressive of all 
countries, with a population of nearly 
70,000,000 of people, alert to every prof¬ 
itable, legitimate business, mushroom 
growing, one of the simple and most 
remunerative of industries, is almost 
unknown. The raising of mushrooms 
is within the reach of nearly everyone. 
Good materials to work with and care¬ 
ful attention to all practical details 
should give good returns. The indus¬ 
try is one in which women and child¬ 
ren can take part, as well as men. It 
furnishes indoor employment in win¬ 
ter, and there is very little hard labor 
attached to it, while it can be made 
subsidiary to almost any other business, 
and even a recreation, as well as a 
source of profit.” 
Among the largest mushroom grow¬ 
ers in the vicinity of Philadelphia who 
supply the market the Mushroom 
Culture Company, at Landale, the An¬ 
dre Nursery at Doylestown, the Rokeby 
farm at Westtown, Chester County, and 
the Penrose Nursery down at Nine¬ 
teenth and Catharine streets. The 
proprietors of these establishments 
raise all their crops from mushrooom 
spawn, as indeed do the private grow¬ 
ers. This spawn is in itself one of the 
most curious features of the industry. 
It comes in compressed cakes about 
nine inches long by five inches wide, 
and an inch and a quarter thick. The 
spawn is all imported from England 
and France, although efforts are now 
being made by a grower in Rhode Is¬ 
land to produce it. A Chestnut street 
seed man who makes a specialty of 
supplying the spawn to growers ex 
plained to a Record reporter just what 
it was, how it is made and the way in 
which it is planted, all of which is very 
interesting. 
What practical mushroom growers 
call spawn, he said, is what the botanist 
terms mycelium. The spawn is the 
true mushroom plant and permeates 
the ground in which it may be grow¬ 
ing. It is represented by a delicate, 
white, mold-like network of threads 
which traverse the soil. The mush¬ 
room bears myriads of spores which 
are analogous to seeds, and these be. 
