TRUFFLE. 353 



yields, grow in the neighbourhood of tli;- 

 city of Elis. 



Pliny did not consider truffles as plants, 

 but thought them only an excrement of the 

 earth. He says, that Lartius Licinus, who 

 was praetor and governor in the Spanish pro- 

 vinces, while he was at Carthage, in eating a 

 truffle, bit upon a Roman silver denarius that 

 was within it. But this is no proof that the 

 truffle is a mere bubble of the earth, as was 

 anciently supposed; as the plant in its forma- 

 tion might have enveloped the denarius. 



This highly flavoured vegetable substance 

 was used in France much earlier than in 

 England ; as appears by the verses of Eu- 

 stache Deschamps, who, in the time of Charles 

 the Sixth, was made ill by eating them, and 

 took the same revenge that Horace took on 

 the garlic, by writing an ode against it. 



The use of truffles does not appear to 

 have been known to the English epicures in 

 the time of Queen Elizabeth, as Gerard only 

 notices them in saying, " There is a kind of 

 mushroom, with a certain round excrescence 

 growing within the earth, vnder the vppei 

 crust or face of the same, in drie and grauelly 

 grounds in Pannonia, and the provinces ad- 

 ioining, which do cause the ground to swell, 



VOL. II. 2 A 



