Generation of the Plant.
THE Mushroom tribe has long afforded much speculation to naturalists, with respect to being perfect or imperfect plants. The flower and seed, from their exceeding minuteness and obscurity, (if they really exist at all) remaining invisible even by the aid of the microscope. Many therefore suppose that there is no production of flower or seed, but that they owe their origin entirely to the putrefaction of earth or dung. This sort of soil however first discovers them under the form of a white, mouldy, fibrous substance, called spawn, which proves productive of numerous minute white knots, or embryo plants, gradually increasing to the perfect Mushroom.
On this subject the botanic world have been long divided in opinion, the moderns generally contend for the flower and seed, and have in a manner confuted the doctrine of putrefaction.
These consider the Mushroom as a true and perfect plant, produced from seed afforded from the flower of preceding plants by some wonderful secret in nature.
The invisible seed discharged on the adjacent soil, and thence disseminated by the air to situations adapted to it's nature, germinates and shoots forth into white fibrous, cobweb-like substances, spreading and forming the spawn and embryo plants for the production of the future Mushroom. Thus, probably, by such dissemination, and so mysterious a progress of nature, adapted to certain soils and situations, it is, that we often find both Mushroom and spawn abundantly in obscure places where none were ever observed before, in old dung hot-beds, horse dunghills, and in bye dry places where horse-stable dung has lain undisturbed til rotten.
The spawn is also often found in pasture fields under the turf, in places where rooms are observed to rise naturally, dung-spawn however is preferable for garden culture, as well on account of the probability of a good crop, as of it's being the true sort.