f
the manure and lay it aside for other purposes. This may be of further
use as bedding in the stables, covering the mushroom beds after they
have been made up, or for hotbeds; if well wetted with stable drainings,
or even plain water, it forms a ready heating material.

Many a time when we have been short of home-made manure I have bought
some loads here and there from different stables in the village, and
mixed all together and made it into beds with excellent results.
Sometimes when the manure under preparation had been rather old and
cool, I have added a fifth or tenth part of fresh droppings to it, with
very quickening effect in heating and apparent benefit to the crop.

It is generally believed that the manure of entire horses is better for
mushrooms than that of other horses, but positive evidence in this
direction has never come under my observation. Some practical men assert
that there is no difference. Mr. John G. Gardner, at the Rancocas Farm,
who has had abundant opportunity to test this matter, tells me that he
has given it a fair trial and been unable to find any difference in the
quality or quantity of mushrooms raised from beds made from the manure
of entire horses and those raised from beds made from the manure of
other equally as well fed animals. But the Parisian growers insist that
there is a difference in favor of entire horses, especially in the case
of hard-worked animals such as are engaged in heavy carting.

Manure of horses that are largely fed with carrots is emphatically
condemned by most writers on the cultivation of mushrooms; indeed, it is
one of _the_ points in every book on mushrooms which I have read. Let us
look at a few practical facts: There are at Dosoris two shelf beds in
one cellar; each is thirty feet long, three feet wide, and nine inches
deep, and both are bearing a very thick crop of mushrooms. The material
in these beds consists of horse manure three parts and chopped sod loam
one part, which had been mixed and fermented together from the first
preparation. The manure was saved from the stables on the place in
November, '88, the materials prepared in December, the beds built Dec.
17, spawned Dec. 24, molded over Dec. 31, and first mushrooms gathered
Feb. 7, 1889. These beds bore well until the middle of April. The
mushrooms did not average as large as they did on the deeper beds upon
the floor of the cellar, but they ran about three-fourths to one ounce
apiece, and a good m