EDIBLE FRUITS. 655 



parts of France and Germany. [It was formerly fairly common 

 in oak forests in the south of England, and is still found in 

 Sussex and Hampshire. — Tr.] Other species * of truffles, 

 especially T. cestivum and Choimmi/ces meandiformis, are 

 found from Hannover to the river Vistula. The importance of 

 truffles may he gathered from the fact that 1,500 tons (worth 

 4^640,000) are exported annually from France ; in the whole of 

 Germany only ahout a ton (worth i;35) is collected yearly. 



In Perigord, land formerly stocked with vineyards is now 

 planted with young oaks for the cultivation of truffles, which 

 grow as a mjicorluza on the oak roots. This is said to pay 

 three to five times as well as vineyards. Whole villages are 

 engaged in this industry, which has now gone beyond the 

 experimental stage. [When the high price is considered at 

 which truffles are sold, there is every reason for endeavouring to 

 grow them in the south of England and Ireland. — Tr.] 



8. Edible Fruits. 



Cranberries and bilberries are the edible fruits most frequently 

 collected from forests. In many districts all the children are 

 engaged during the season in collecting these berries, and a large 

 trade driven in the produce ; there are commercial houses in 

 North Germany which deal with them to the extent of i5,000 

 and more yearly. The forests of the Fichtelgebirge, the Spessart, 

 the Schwarzwald, &c., yield large quantities of these berries. 

 When fully ripe, large wooden combs are used to strip off the 

 berries into baskets. Only a small part of the produce is 

 now used for brandy ; it is chiefly made into wine, partly to 

 convert white wine into red wine and partly as bilberry wine, 

 which is sold at Frankfort- on-Maine and other places as a 

 medicinal beverage ; it is also sent in large quantities to the 

 south of France to be mixed with grape-wine and sold as claret, t 

 Bilberries may be also eaten fresh, cooked or dried. 



Several municipal forests in Germany sell annually from 

 ^625 to £50 worth of bilberries. In the forest-range of 

 Ottenhofen, in Baden, £250 worth were sold in 1855, and for 



■' Cf. R. Hesse, Die JL/pnya/ien Dcutschlands, Halle, 1891. 

 t E. Laxis, in Handelsblatt fiir Walderzeugnisse, 1894, No. 23. 



