“MUSHROOM seeds, or spores, form on these gills, these points, and on the walls of the tubes of which these holes are the orifices. I recommend to Jules the following experiment. We will take some mushrooms whose caps are not yet thoroughly spread. We will place them this evening on a sheet of white paper. During the night the blossoming will be finished and the ripe seeds will fall from the gills of the agarics and the tubes of the boleti. To-morrow morning we shall find on the paper an impalpable dust, red, rose, brown, according to the kind of mushroom.

Binocular Microscope

“This dust is nothing but a mass of seeds, of spores, so fine that they cannot be seen separately without a microscope, so numerous they cannot be counted. There are millions and millions of them.”

“A microscope,” interrupted Emile. “Is that the instrument with which you sometimes look at things so small that the naked eye can scarcely see them?”

“Yes. A microscope enlarges the objects seen through it, and shows them to us in all their details of structure, although they would be hidden from the unaided eye by their smallness.”

“Will you show us through the microscope the mushroom spores when I have collected them on a sheet of paper?” asked Jules.

“I will show them to you. One spore is enough, under favorable conditions of heat and moisture, to germinate and develop into white filaments or mycelium from which will spring at the right time numerous mushrooms. How many mushrooms would be produced if all the spores that fall by myriads and myriads from the gills of a single agaric were to germinate? Here again we have the story of the cod, the louse, all the feeble creatures, in short, that reproduce their kind in such immense numbers.”

“To have mushrooms, then, as many as we want, it is only necessary to sow the spores?” Jules again inquired.

Spores

“In that you are mistaken, my dear child. Up to this time mushroom culture has been impossible, because the care required by their excessively delicate seeds is not understood by us, or may even be beyond our power. Only one edible mushroom is cultivated, and even in growing this we use not the spores, but the mycelium.

“They call it the hot-bed mushroom. It is an agaric, satiny white above and pale rose beneath. In the old stone quarries near Paris they make beds of horse manure and light earth. In these beds they put pieces of mycelium known to horticulturists under the name of mushroom-spawn. This spawn ramifies, pushes out numerous filaments, and from these finally spring the mushrooms.”

“Good to eat!”

“Excellent. Among the mushrooms we gathered are those that I am going to acquaint you with.

“Look at this first of all. It is an agaric. The upper surface of the cap is a beautiful orange-red; the gills underneath are yellow. The stalk rises from the bottom of a sort of white bag with............