After selecting the position in which we wish to propagate mushrooms, and no moderately dry pastureland need be without them, the next thing to consider is the providing of the spawn. Hitherto this has probably been the great difficulty. When nearly 20_l._ worth of mushroom spawn was annually used in the mushroom-houses of a large garden, the expense necessary to spawn a large pasture might well alarm the richest of mushroom-loving landholders; but there is not the slightest occasion for purchasing the spawn for this purpose. Every farmer and country gentleman can make it as easily as, or more easily than, the spawn-manufacturer, without any expense or inconvenience, the essential thing being a quantity of rather short stable-manure. Where this is gathered in large heaps it will be easy to obtain the requisite materials at once. Where it is not so, a few loads of stable manure unmixed with long straw may be thrown together in the open air and prepared for the purpose. There is no occasion to place it in a shed of any kind, though if there be one at hand so much the better. If prepared in the open air it should be on a dry place; the materials should be subjected to exactly the same preparation as when used for making a mushroom-bed, before described. They should be made into a potato-pit-shaped bed, and spawned in the usual manner. For this spawning it is of course necessary to obtain a little spawn, whether home-made or bought from the seedsman, or found in what the French call “a virgin condition” in the dunghill. In any case it will not be found difficult to spawn one or more beds in this way, particularly as there is nothing to prevent people drying as much home-made spawn at one time as will suffice for a year or more. The spawn should be allowed to run through this bed, which should be covered with a slight sprinkling of earth, and beaten pretty firm. When it has penetrated through the bed, it should, just before it arrives at a bearing condition, be ready to be used as spawn. The number of beds to be spawned in this way may be limited according to the extent of ground on which it is proposed to grow the mushrooms. This spawn may be inserted in the meadows in early summer, the most suitable time is in genial weather in May, and the spawn should be inserted in holes from six to ten feet apart.