The main factor in mushroom-growing is beds. First, the material of which they are composed; secondly, the way they are made. Fresh manure, with a fair percentage of short bedding (straw or leaves preferably), must be collected each day when the stables are cleaned. We use two parts horse and one part cow manure, sometimes substituting sheep-droppings for horse. The daily collection must be stored in a shed and made into a pile about three feet high and two and a half feet wide. As soon as sufficient manure is collected to fill the beds, the curing process should be commenced. This consists of packing manure closely together, and if at all dry, slightly moistening it with water or drainage from the stables to start fermentation. Within a few hours the heat will commence to create steam and it must be forked over and made into a fresh pile. To check the heat, which would, if left to run its course, quickly burn out the value of the manure and render it worthless, forking and repiling will probably have to be repeated three or four times, with from two to three days intervening, according to the strength of the manure and the temperature. It usually takes from two to three weeks to cure manure properly. When it shows a temperature of one hundred degrees Fahrenheit after being undisturbed for thirty-six hours, it may be considered all right. We half fill beds with the rough material, then mix soil from sod ground with the remainder to fill up the top of the beds. The proportion is about one-third soil to two-thirds prepared manure. When filling the beds, the manure, and also the mixture of soil and manure, should be strewed in thin layers, say about two inches at a time, and stamped down thoroughly before the next layer is added. When the beds are filled, cover the surface with straw or mats to prevent the beds becoming dry. The manure will heat considerably after being packed in the beds, so thermometers should be inserted every few feet, as planting must not be done until the temperature falls to ninety degrees Fahrenheit, at which stage the straw or mat can be removed and the spawn inserted. The propagation of mushrooms is entirely different from that of any other vegetable, neither seed, bulb, nor cutting holding any place in the process. From the gill-like lining of a full-grown mushroom fall innumerable spores, so minute that if caught on a sheet of paper they would look like dust. If the spores fall upon earth that is in just the right condition, mould-like filaments develop, spread and become what we call spawn. Spawn culture is a complicated process, which concerns the grower of mushrooms not at all, as he buys spawn as he would any other seed, except that it is sold in compressed brick-like cakes, which weigh about a pound apiece, or in rough shreds; the latter variety being known as flake or French spawn.