INSECT AND OTHER ENEMIES. 
133 
affected by it are both unwholesome and indigestible, 
and I can readily believe that in aggravated cases they 
are poisonous. It is caused by other fungi which infest 
the gills and frills of the mushrooms, and render them a 
hard, flocky mass; sometimes 
the affected mushrooms preserve 
their white skin, color, and nor- 
mal form, at other times the cap 
becomes more or less distorted. 
The illustration, Fig. 26, is 
from life, and a good average 
of a flock-infested mushroom. 
In gathering mushrooms the 
growers should insist that every flock-infested mush¬ 
room be discarded, and consumers of mushrooms should 
familiarize themselves with this disease so as to know 
and reject every mushroom showing a trace of it. 
Fig. 26. A Flock-Diseased 
Mushroom. 
Flock does not affect all the mushrooms in a bed at 
any time, and I do not believe it spreads in the bed, or, 
to use the expression, becomes contagious. If one spot 
of mildew appears upon a cucumber, rose, or grape vine 
indoors, and is not checked, it soon becomes general all 
over the plant or plants, and if one spot of mold occurs 
in a propagating bed and is not checked at once it soon 
spreads over a large space and destroys every cutting or 
seedling within'its reach, but this is not the case with 
flock in a mushroom bed. If one mushroom is affected 
with flock every mushroom produced from that piece of 
spawn is affected, but not one mushroom produced from 
the pieces of spawn inserted next to this one is affected 
by it; not even if the mycelium from the several lumps 
of spawn forms an interlacing web. If the flock is con¬ 
fined to the mushrooms produced from a certain bit of 
spawn some may ask, will the other pieces of spawn 
broken from the same brick produce flock-infested mush¬ 
rooms ? No. I have given this point particular atten- 
