growing center of the
country, also the best market for mushrooms in the country. One gardener
at Jamaica, L. I., bought 1000 lbs of brick spawn at one time, and a
neighbor of his bought 400 lbs; this shows what a large quantity of
spawn market gardeners require. And the demand this year is
unprecedented; some of our leading importers had sold out their supply
before the first of November. And it is not private growers so much as
market growers who are the cause of this; the market men find there is
money in growing mushrooms and they are going into it.

Spawn comes in the form of dry, hard, solid manure bricks, and also in
the form of flakes of half rotted strawy manure. These bricks and flakes
are completely permeated with the mushroom mycelium.

The brick spawn is commonly known as English spawn, and what is imported
into this country is made in England, mostly about London. The bricks
made by the different manufacturers vary a little in size and weight; in
some cases ten bricks go to the bushel, in others fourteen, and in
others sixteen. This last is the commonest sized brick, and weighs
exactly a pound, and measures about eight and one-half inches long, five
and one-fourth inches wide, and one and one-fourth inches thick; it is
what the London spawn makers call a 9x6x2 inch brick, but it shrinks in
drying. In retailing brick spawn in this country it is sold by weight
and not by measure.

Mill-track mushroom spawn is advertised by some of our seedsmen, but
what they sell under this name is only the ordinary English brick spawn.
One of our prominent seed firms who advertise it write me: "Genuine
mill-track spawn used to be the best in England, but it has been
superseded, although European gardeners still call for English spawn
under the name of 'mill-track.'" The real mill-track spawn is the
natural spawn that has spread through the thoroughly amalgamated horse
droppings in mill-tracks or the cleanings from mill-tracks. It is
usually sold in large, irregular, somewhat soft lumps, and is much
esteemed by spawn makers for impregnating their bricks, but nowadays,
that horses have given place to steam as a motive power in mills, we
have no further supply of mill-track spawn for use in spawning our
mushroom beds. We do not feel this loss, however, as the spawn now
manufactured by our best makers will produce as good a crop of
mushrooms as the old mill-track natural spawn used to do.

The flake spawn is what is general