< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu
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TOADSTOOLS AND THEIR KINDRED.
garden. Knowing its value, and being particularly fond of it when fried for breakfast, he was anxious to secure its permanence. The spot on which the specimens appeared was marked off and guarded, so that it was never desecrated by the spade, and the soil remained consequently undisturbed. So long as he resided on the premises, he counted upon and gathered several specimens of the puff-ball, the mycelium continuing to produce them year after year. Burying a ripe specimen in similar soil, and watering the ground with an infusion of fresh specimens, has been tried without success."
Fig. 10. Fairy-ring Champignon (Marasmius oreades).

Mushroom-growing, as carried on in some parts of France, is so extraordinary as to deserve mention. In the vicinity of Paris there are extensive caves formed by stone-quarries long since abandoned. In these caves, sixty or seventy feet underground, and extending great distances, the temperature is equal and the air moist, and here mushroom-beds are made, and immense quantities of the plant are grown for home and foreign markets. An idea of the magnitude of the business may be formed when it is known that one proprietor has twenty-one miles of beds, another sixteen, another seven, and so on through a long list. In the ramifications of the cave of Montrouge (Fig. 11), just outside the fortifications of Paris, there are six or seven miles' run of mushroom-beds. It is entered through a circular opening, like the mouth of a well, and the only mode of descent is down a shaky pole, furnished with cross-bars, the base of which rests in darkness sixty feet below.

A gentleman who visited this cave remarks:

"I had an idea that one might enter sideways in a more agreeable manner, but it was not so. Down the shaky pole my guide creeps, I follow, and soon reach the bottom, from which little passages radiate. A few little lamps, fixed on pointed sticks, are placed below, and, arming ourselves with one each, we slowly commence exploring dark, still, tortuous passages. ... On each hand are little narrow beds of half-decomposed stable-manure running along the wall, that have not yet been spawned. ... "Wherever the rocky subway became as large as a small bedroom, two or three little beds were placed parallel to each other. They are about twenty inches high, and were dotted all over with mush-
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