Natural Historic of the Truffle. 391 



my employment in the company of experienced truffle-hunters. 

 This is the reason of my publishing the present work, which, 

 though it lays no claim to be considered a complete treatise, yet 

 perhaps may be more satisfactory than the former ones, that are 

 generally to be found dispersed in dictionaries of natural history 

 or of husbandry. Of these the best seems to me to be that in 

 the Natur-und^Kunst-Lexicon of Lippold and Funke, vol. iii., 

 article Triiffel. 



I. The Natural History of the Truffle. 



§ 2. Classification. — Two esteemed botanists (Braune in his 

 preface to the third part of the Flora of Salzbtirg, and Bork- 

 hausen in his Botany .^ § 3. and 412.), in their subtleties, have 

 denominated mushrooms the spectres of the inanimate vegetable 

 kingdom ; and the immortal Linnaeus, in his Regniim vegetabile, 

 still more unaptly calls them vagrants and barbarians, a thievish 

 race, voracious creatures, &c. He, who in a capricious fit 

 chooses to give an equally suitable appellation to truffles, may 

 call them the gnomes of the immaterial vegetable kingdom ; for 

 they are only a kind of mushroom which grows under the sur- 

 face of the earth, and are for the greater part of their existence 

 externally invisible; being observable only for a short period, 

 and by certain favoured animals, after which they speedily un- 

 dergo dissolution. 



By some botanists, mushrooms or fungi are assigned to an 

 intermediate kingdom ; by a very few they are referred to the 

 animal kingdom ; but by most they are retained in the vegetable 

 kingdom. That they are not properly organised plants is correct, 

 for they want most of the characteristics of plants. No distinct 

 organs of generation, no decided seeds, have as yet been observed 

 in them, and no one has, as yet, succeeded in methodically in- 

 creasing them by artificial cultivation, on the same principle as 

 other vegetables, with the exception of the garden mushroom. 

 Truffles are usually developed where vegetable life ceases, and 

 where the first step of the decomposition of vegetable matter 

 has commenced, under the requisite degree of moisture, warmth, 

 and light. 



The counsellor of regency, Medicus of Mannheim, lately 

 deceased, a very excellent botanist, in his theory upon the foi-- 

 mation of truffles, which has great merit, calls them educts, not 

 products, of the vegetable kingdom, and endeavours by the 

 idea of a vegetable crystallisation, to present to the senses the 

 manner of their coming into existence, in which they assume 

 determinate forms, from which they never vary. Other vegetable 

 physiologists brought the former seed theory upon the tapis, and 

 endeavoured to place it beyond a doubt, that fungi are simple 

 plants, with most simple imperceptible organs of generation. 



c c 4 



