Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 July 1875 — Mushroom Cares, [ARTICLE]

Mushroom Cares,

The famous mushroom caves of Paris are in reality deserted stone-quarries in the suburbs of the city. They are entered by shafts, and consist of a series of dark, low, long corridors. Their floors are covered with long lines of narrow beds, made of rich compost of earth and horse-ma-

nure. The paths between the beds are kept scrupulously clean, and the mushrooms are carefully cultured. One of these caves at Montrouge, jnst outside the fortifications of Paris, contains sever miles of beds and yields an average ol 300 pounds of mushrooms daily. Near Frepillon, an hour’s ride from Paris, there is another class of caves or old quarries that have a lofty interior, with something of the aspect of a vast cathedral. In 1867 one of these caves had a run of twenty-one miles of mushroombeds. During that same year over 3,000 pounds of mushrooms were daily sent to Paris from Frepillon. The crops vary according to certain atmospheric and other conditions, and at intervals the great quarries refuse to yield a profitable crop. They are then thoroughly cleansed, the very soil being scraped out, and are left tr lie fallow for a year or two.

When Mrs. Gerkes, of Sixth street, says she will do this or that, she means what she says. She told Gerkes the other day that if he didn’t bring her a new dress at noon she would go up-town and run him in debt fifty dollars. The dress didn’t come, and she went up-town, tramped around for three hours, and was told by thirty-eight different men that they wouldn’t trust Gerkes for a bath brick.— Detroit Free Press. A hundred million bushels of oyster shells lie heaped on the banks of the Damariscotta River, Me., and yet no oysters hr.ve lived in those waters within the memory of man.