e soil should be mellow but inclined to moist. If wet
it can only be used clumsily and spread with difficulty; if dry it can
be spread easily but not made firm, and on ridge beds can not be put on
evenly. But when moderately moist it can be spread easily and evenly on
flat or rounded surfaces, and made firm and smooth.

How deep the mold shall be put upon the bed is also an unsettled
question. Some growers recommend three-fourths of an inch, others one,
one and one-half, two, or two and one-half inches, and some of our best
growers of fifty or seventy-five years ago were emphatic in asserting
three inches as the proper depth, but among recent writers I do not find
any who go beyond two and one-half inches. My own experience is in favor
of a heavy covering, say one and one-half to two inches. In the case of
a thin covering the mushrooms come up all right but their texture is not
as solid as it is in the case of a heavy covering, nor do the beds
continue as long in bearing; besides, "fogging off" is much more
prevalent under thinly covered than under heavily covered beds; also,
when the coating of loam is heavy a great many more of the "pinheads"
develop into full sized mushrooms than in the case of thinly molded
beds.

Opinions differ as to firming the soil. I am in favor of packing the
soil quite firm, and have never seen good mushrooms that could not come
through a well firmed casing of loam, and I never knew of an instance
where firm casing stopped or checked the spreading of the mycelium or
the development of the mushrooms. In the case of flat beds,--for
instance, those made on shelves and floors,--a slightly compacted
coating (and this is all Mr. J. G. Gardner uses) may be all right, but
in the case of alongside-of-walls, ridge, and other rounded beds I much
prefer and always use solidly compacted casings.

Mr. Henshaw has for several years used green sods about two inches
thick, put all over the bed, grass side down, and beaten firmly. The
advantage of using sods instead of soil, he thinks, is that the young
clusters of mushrooms never damp or "fogg off" as they are apt to do
when soil is used.

I have given this green sods method repeated and careful trials, and am
satisfied that it has no advantages, in any way, over common fibrous
loam; indeed, it is not as good. No matter how firmly a sod, having its
green side down, may be beaten on to a bed of manure, there is barely
any union between the two; the sod mer