and ruins the mushrooms that were
fed through them.

=Loam Containing Old Manure.=--Loam in which there is a good deal of
old, undecomposed manure, such as the rich soil of our vegetable
gardens, is unqualifiedly condemned by some writers because of the
quantity of spurious and noxious fungi it is supposed to produce when
used in mushroom beds. But I can not join in this denunciation because
my experience does not justify it. This earth is the only kind used by
many market gardeners, as they have no other, and certainly without
apparent injurious effect. When I was connected with the London market
gardens, some twenty years ago, Steele, Bagley, Broadbent, and the other
large mushroom growers in the Fulham Fields cased all of their beds with
the common garden soil--perhaps the most manure-filled soil on the face
of the earth--and spurious fungi never troubled them. Indeed, I can not
understand why it should produce baneful crops of toadstools when used
in mushroom beds, and no toadstools when used for other horticultural
purposes, as on our carnation benches in greenhouses, in our lettuce or
cucumber beds, or in the case of potted plants. True, spurious fungi may
appear in the earth on our greenhouse benches or frame beds or mushroom
beds at any time and in more or less quantity, but I am convinced that
the rich earth of the vegetable garden has no more to do with producing
toadstools than has any other good soil, and old manure has far less to
do with it than has fresh manure.

All practical gardeners know how apt hotbeds, in spring when their heat
is on the decline, are to produce a number of toadstools; and, also,
that when the bed is "spent," that is, when the heat is altogether gone,
the tendency to bear toadstools has gone too. This peculiarity is more
apparent in spring than in fall. All mushroom growers know that spurious
fungi, when they appear at all, are most numerous three to two weeks
before it is time for the mushrooms to come in sight. The same growth
appears in the manure piles out in the yard; a few weeks after the
strong heat of the manure has gone lots of toadstools may be observed on
and about the heaps, but on the piles of well-rotted cold manure we
seldom find toadstools at all.

The fresh, clean stable manure used in mushroom-growing is not apt to be
charged with the spores of pernicious toadstools; their presence is
always most marked in the case of mixed manures.

And there is a current idea