INSECT AND OTHER ENEMIES. 
131 
the gills to the fleshy caps. Eats are far more destruc¬ 
tive than mice. Trapping is the only remedy I use, and 
would not use poison in the mushroom houses for these 
creatures for obvious reasons. But we should make our 
houses secure against their inroads. 
Toads.—These are recommended as good insect traps 
to be used in mushroom houses, but I do not want them 
there ; the cure is as bad as the disease. The mushroom 
bed is a little paradise for the toad. He gets upon it 
and burrows or elbows out a snug little hole for himself 
wherever he wishes, and many of them, too, and cares 
nothing about whether, in his efforts to make himself 
comfortable, he has heaved out the finest clumps of 
young mushrooms in the beds. 
Fogging Off.—This is one of the commonest ail¬ 
ments peculiar to cultivated mushrooms. It consists in 
the softening, shriveling, and perishing of part of the 
young mushrooms, which also usually assume a brown¬ 
ish color. These withered mushrooms do not occur 
singly here and there over the face of the bed, but in 
patches; generally all or nearly all of the very small 
mushrooms in a clump will turn brown and soft, and 
there is no help for them ; they never will recover their 
plumpness. Some writers attribute fogging off to un¬ 
favorable atmospheric conditions,—the temperature may 
be too cold, or too hot, or the atmosphere too moist, or 
too dry. I am convinced that fogging off is due to the 
destruction of the mycelium threads that supported 
these mushrooms; it is a disease of the “root,” to use 
this expression; the “roots” having been killed, the 
tops must necessarily perish. If it were caused by un¬ 
favorable conditions above ground we should expect all 
of the crop to be more or less injuriously affected; but 
this does not occur; the mushrooms in one clump may 
be withered, and contiguous clumps perfectly healthy. 
Anything that will kill the spawn or mycelium threads 
