This may be taken as a sample of the practice very extensively followed in this country. Happily, we have excellent mushroom growers who succeed without all this trouble, as the following remarks of Mr. J. Barnes will show:--“For the last thirty years I have made my beds entirely on the floor in sheds, wheeling in the stable dung as it is brought fresh from the stable, adding a fourth, or a little more than a fourth, of good friable loam, mixing both well together, pressing firmly down, and letting it remain about a week or so untouched. At the end of that time we turn it over, and if we consider it in too strong a state of fermentation we add a little more soil, and then tread down firmly. Very soon the bed is ready to be spawned, and encased in a couple of inches of soil; and in this way we get the finest crops of mushrooms, the beds remaining a long time in bearing. After the beds have been some time, say from six to twelve weeks, in bearing, and begin to get dry, and cease to bear well, we water them thoroughly with very clear liquid manure, made from sheep or deer or cow manure, which seems to start them again into bearing, and then we manage to keep some of the beds in bearing for many months at a time.” In the _Field_, Dec. 22, 1868, I stated that the manure for the mushroom-beds in the Royal Gardens, Frogmore, was not prepared in any elaborate way, but simply taken from a great heap fermenting in the yard, any parts of it that had become white from heat being moistened with water, and the whole being mixed with about a fourth part of loam. Mr. Cuthill, an authority on mushroom culture, tells us how the London market gardeners manage with their manure. As the material is brought home from the London stables, the short part is taken out of it, and the long litter is kept for the purpose of covering, as well as for forming the interior of ridges; for all mushroom-beds out of doors are made into ridges. The manure is not allowed to heat before it is put into the beds, if that can be prevented; for previously heated material does not produce such fine mushrooms. The fresher the horse-dung is, the longer the crop will last and every gardener who makes up beds with unheated droppings knows how superior they are to fermented manure.