The manure employed is that brought from the London stables, the longer litter being shaken out and put on one side to cover the beds. No care whatever is taken in the preparation of the manure; it is usually made into beds soon after it is brought home and before it is allowed to heat, and then the beds are made in the form of potato-pits and beaten very firm. The beds are spawned when at about a temperature of eighty degrees, the pieces of spawn being placed about a foot or so apart, and it is then immediately earthed, the ordinary soil being used, and the bed covered to a thickness of a couple of inches. The success attained by the market-gardeners of both London and Paris, with the ordinary soil of the place in which the beds may be made, well proves the absurdity of seeking for any particular kind of soil for covering mushroom-beds. Beds made in this way in the autumn and winter months, and covered with a thick layer of litter and mats, seldom require any watering. The culture is not usually attempted in summer; the heat acting upon the littery covering giving rise to insects which destroy the mushrooms; but with care their culture is quite practicable at that season; in proof of which I may say that during the last week of July, 1868, I saw them gathered freely in a market-garden just beside the Gloucester Road Station of the Metropolitan Railway, where by using a coating of litter about a foot thick, and over that a layer of mats, it was possible to procure them in good condition throughout the hottest summer within memory. There are many acres of ground covered with beds made thus in the market-gardens round London. [Illustration: Fig. 27. Uncovered end of mushroom-bed in Paris market-garden. January, 1867.]