manure for mushrooms. It is mixed a little and smells
very rank, and in mushroom beds usually produces a good deal of spurious
fungi. Most all of our largest mushroom growers, Van Siclen of Jamaica,
Denton of Woodhaven, Connard of Hoboken, and others, live within easy
hauling distance of the city, and are able to select and get the very
choicest manure at a very cheap rate.

=Baled Manure.=--Within a year or two a good deal of our city horse
manure has been put up in bales and thus shipped and sold. Each bale
contains from 350 to nearly 500 lbs, and is made up, pressed and tied in
about the same way as baled hay. The principal advantages of the bales
are these: Only the cleanest horse manure is put up in this way; cow
manure, offal, spent hops, or other short or soft manures are not
included in the bales, nor, on account of shipping considerations, are
malodorous manures of any sort permitted in them. The railroads allow
baled manure to be put off on their platforms, and closer to their
stations than they would allow loose manure; and it often happens that
an agent will send a carload to a railroad station and dump it off there
so that the people around who have only small garden lots can have an
opportunity of buying one or more bales, just as they need it, and
without, as is generally the case, having to buy a whole load when they
need only half a load. These bales are quite a boon to people who would
like to have a small bed of mushrooms in their cellar and who have no
other manure. Bring home one or more bales, open them, spread out the
manure a little, and when it heats turn it a few times, and it will soon
be ready for use. Or if you do not wish to litter up the place, roll the
bales into the cellar, shed, or wherever else you wish to make use of
them, and mix about one-fourth of their bulk of loam with the manure
and make up the bed at once.

The Board of Health of New York city is very emphatic in its endeavors
to rid the city of any accumulation of manure and, a year ago, had under
consideration a plan to compel the manure agents, for sanitary reasons,
to bale the stable manure. And perhaps this is the reason why it is so
easily procured, to wit: A New York gentleman, desirous of engaging in
the mushroom-growing business, writes me: "I get my manure from the city
in bales. All it costs me is the freight to my place at White Plains."
Lucky gentleman! With any amount of the best kind of stable manure
gratis, no