ber, instead
of trying to hide anything in their cultivation from me, he took
particular pains to show and explain to me everything about his way of
growing them. And he assures me that by adopting simple means of
preparing the manure and "fixing" for the crop, and avoiding all
complicated methods, one can get good crops and make fair profits.

His cellar is sixty feet long, twenty-four feet wide, and nine feet high
from floor to ceiling. The floor is an earthen one, but perfectly dry.
It is well supplied with window ventilators and doors, and in the
ceiling in the middle of the cellar opens a tall shaft or chimney-like
ventilator that passes straight up through the roof above. While the
beds are being made full ventilation by doors, windows and shaft is
given, but as soon as there is any sign of the mushrooms appearing all
ventilators except the shaft in the middle are shut and kept closed.

The bed occupies the whole surface of the cellar floor and was all made
up in one day. As a pathway, a single row of boards is laid on the top
of the bed, running lengthwise along the middle of the cellar from the
door to the farther end, and here and there between this narrow path and
the walls on either side a few pieces of slate are laid down on the bed
to step upon when gathering the mushrooms. Here is the oddest thing
about Mr. Gardner's mushroom-growing. He does not give the manure any
preparatory treatment for the beds. He hauls it from the cars to the
cellar, at once spreads it upon the floor and packs it solid into a bed.
For example, on one occasion the manure arrived at Jobstown, July 8th;
it was hauled home and the bed made up the same day, and the first
mushrooms were gathered from this bed the second week in
September,--just two months from the time the manure left the New York
or Jersey City stables. The bed was fifteen inches thick. In making it
the manure was first shaken up loosely to admit of its being more evenly
spread than if pitched out in heavy forkfuls, and it was then tramped
down firmly with the feet. The bed was then marked off into halves. On
one half (No. 1) a layer of a little over three inches of loam was at
once placed over the manure; on the other half (No. 2) no loam was used
at this time, but the manure on the surface of the bed--about three
inches deep--was forked over loosely. Twelve days after having been put
in the temperature of the bed No. 2, three inches deep, was 90 deg., and
then it was