TRUFFLE. S57 



thunder, and called them ceraunia, thunder 

 roots. 



The heat in August and September bring- 

 ing them to a degree of maturity, they are 

 then of a fine flavour and agreeable smell, 

 and ready to yield what has been thought 

 their seed ; but M. Builliard considers the 

 edible truffle as a viviparous vegetable, and 

 asserts that the grains found within the cells 

 of the fleshy substance are not seeds, as has 

 been supposed, but small truffles already 

 formed, as they have the same figure and 

 colour as the parent plant ; that they have, 

 like it, their surfaces covered with little 

 pointed eminences ; and that, in arriving at 

 their complete size, they do not develope 

 themselves like seeds, but grow by a simple 

 extension of parts, by means of the minute 

 points which cover their surface, and which 

 become prolonged into short threads or fibres, 

 by which they draw from the parent truffle 

 the juices necessary to their growth : " in all 

 these respects, (says the ingenious authoress 

 of Sketches of the Physiology of Vegetable 

 Life) curiously and accurately resembling 

 the well-known progress of the viviparous 

 Polype." By the fibres, through which tin 1 

 young truffles have drawn their nourishment, 



