90 
AMERICAN KITCHEN GARDENER. 
second inch of fres 1 mould and a coat of straw. If your bed has been reel 
constructed, your mushrooms will be fit for use at the end of five or six weeks, 
and will continue to be productive for several months. Should you, how¬ 
ever, in the course of the winter, find its productiveness diminished, take of! 
nearly all the original covering, and replace it with eight or ten inches ot 
fresh dung and a coat of clean straw. This, by creating a n&w heat, will re¬ 
vive the action of the spawn, and give a long succession of mushrooms.”-—■ 
Mem. of N. Y. Board of Agr. vol. ii, p. 125. 
Use .—The garden mushroom is eaten fresh, either stewed or boiled; and 
preserved as a pickle, or in powder, or dried whole. The sauce commonly 
called ketchup (supposed, by Martyn, from the Japanese kit-jap) is or ought 
to be made from its juice with salt and spices. Wild mushrooms from old 
pastures are generally considered as more delicate in flavor, and more tender 
in flesh, than those raised in artificial beds. But the young or butter mush¬ 
rooms, of the cultivated sort, are firmer, and better for pickling; and in 
using cultivated mushrooms, there is evidently much less risk of deleterious 
kinds being employed.”— Neill and Martyn. 
u Antidote to poisonous sorts. —All fungi should be used with great caution, 
for even the champignon and edible garden-mushrooms possess deleterious 
qualities when grown in certain places. All the edible species should be 
thoroughly masticated, before taken into the stomach, as this greatly lessens 
the effects of poisons. When accidents of this sort happen, vomiting should 
be immediately excited, and then the vegetable acids should be given, either 
vinegar, lemon-juice, or that of apples; after which, give ether and anti- 
spasmodic remedies, to stop the excessive bilious vomiting. Infusions of 
gall-nut, oak-bark, and Peruvian bark are recommended as capable of neu¬ 
tralizing the poisonous principle of mushrooms. It is, however, the safest 
way not to eat any of the good , but less common sorts, until they have been 
soaked in vinegar. Spirits of wine and vinegar extract some part of their 
poison ; and tannin matter decomposes the greatest part of it.”— Botanist’s 
Companion, vol. ii, p. 145. 
MUSTARD. 
Sinapis.—Moutarde , Fr.— Senf, Ger. 
Of this plant there are two species in cultivation, the black and the white, 
annuals, and natives of Great Britain. 
The following are Loudon’s directions for the culture of the white mus 
tard, S. alba. For spring and summer consumption, sow once a week oi 
fortnight, in dry, warm situations, in February and March; and, afterwards. 
