To these reasons I might add a wish to call attention to the waste of money for Mushroom-spawn that now occurs in nearly every garden. There is not the slightest necessity for this. In every garden where Mushrooms are grown abundance of spawn may be made. Mr. W. P. AYRES writes lately to tell me that in a great midland garden where the spawn bill used to amount to 18_l._ or 19_l._ a year, by saving the spawn as the Parisian growers do, all expense for this article is abolished.
I do not attempt to praise or even duly weigh the merits of the Mushroom--that could only be adequately done by the immortal BRILLAT-SAVARIN. He, however, seems to have somewhat neglected this most precious of _légumes_. None but his serious soul could have approached the subject with the necessary solemnity. Nobody but he who first saw the deep dangers of hurried, thoughtless, and irreverent feeding, could have done justice to its exquisite flavour when in the best condition, or could have explained how deliciously it combined the virtues of herb and flesh, unspeakably superior to either. Let us, in passing, quote one of his aphorisms, contributed to form the _base éternelle à la science_: "_La découverte d'un mets nouveau fait plus pour le bonheur du genre humain que la découverte d'une étoile!_"
Now, I do not hesitate to say that the introduction of the Mushroom into our domestic economy in as great a degree as we have it in our power to produce it, would practically be the addition of a new agent in our _cuisine_, second to none for its delicacy, and unsurpassed for utility. It is true the Mushroom is plentiful in its season, but it is with us, at all seasons when it is not to be gathered in the open air, a luxury to numbers of owners of gardens who have means to grow it. As for the much larger class who ought to be supplied from our markets, they seldom see or taste a Mushroom except when these occur in profusion in our fields, though every cart of stable-manure produced in this great horse-keeping country may, on its way towards decomposition and replenishing the earth, be made a nidus for furnishing many dishes of them.
The illustrations showing the cave-culture of mushrooms are from my "Parks, Promenades, and Gardens of Paris." And the frontispiece is after two large cuts of the mushroom caves of Paris, which appeared in the _Illustrated London News_ some time after the appearance of my work. The illustrations of edible fungi are by Mr. WORTHINGTON G. SMITH, who knows and draws these interesting subjects so thoroughly well; and the other figures are by Mr. HODGKIN.