THE MAREMMA. 121 



placed for cryptogamous purposes, in shaded excavations, 

 or in natural caves, or in cellars, where, by its means, are 

 produced vast quantities of the best mushrooms. 



In the Maremma, where the volcanic tufa is the basis 

 of the soil, the surface is intermixed with the animal re- 

 mains of departed empires, and the ordure of cattle, is 

 covered with grasses of old pasturages, and is wet with 

 heavy dews. Everything, therefore, conspires there to 

 a fungiferous end. The tufa is fungiferous, the manure 

 is fungiferous, old pastures are always fungiferous, and 

 the dews of the Maremma not only make night fungi- 

 ferously hideous ; but, by their chilly humectation, act as 

 excitants of the train of nervous symptoms, and, as does 

 driving the cattle in the milk-sickness, they bring on an 

 attack, which, but for this element of the suite, might 

 have been escaped. Instead, therefore, of being surprised 

 at the ascendancy of malarious diseases in the Maremma, 

 we should feel at a loss for a mode of explaining any want 

 there, of a miasmatic predominancy. 



The fungiferous productiveness of the volcanic soil of 

 Italy, is shown by reference to the report of Professor 

 Sanguinetti, Official Inspector of the Fungi at Rome. 

 Not having access to the original, I quote from Dr. Bad- 

 ham's beautiful work on "The Esculent Funguses of Eng- 

 land." "For forty days in autumn, and for about half 

 that period every \ spring, large quantities of funguses, 

 picked in the immediate vicinity of Rome, from Frascati, 

 Rocca di Papa, and Albano, are brought in at the differ- 

 ent gates. 



" The return of taxed mushrooms in the city of Rome, 



gives a yearly average of between 60 and 80,000 pounds 



weight, and if we double this amount, as we may safely 



do, in order to include the smaller untaxed parcels, the 



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