Foreign Notices : — Italy. 419 



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Watertoiis Essays, of which a new edition has just been published, contains 

 a valuable and most original article on the use of weasels in gardens. 



MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



Art. I. Foreign Notices. 



ITALY. 



CULTURE of the Truffle. — I mentioned in my former letter (see p. 192.) 

 that truffles had refused to yield to any sort of cultivation that our gastro- 

 nomes could contrive ; yet some writers on horticulture, and among others 

 Count Philip Re, state, on the authority of the historian John Baptist Giovio 

 of Como, that Giovio's cook throwing the scrapings of truffles in a certain 

 spot of his garden, according to custom, there was found, to the great surprise 

 of all, a complete truffle bed ! After this, many others tried this method of 

 sowing them, but without success. 



Cidture of the Mushroom. This is not the ease with mushrooms, although 

 the growers of them are few, because the Italians prefer eating them when 

 Nature gives them spontaneously; and, to say the truth, she is by no means 

 sparing in this respect, for they are produced in such abundance, that during 

 the season a pound of the finest mushrooms (the Milanese pound is equivalent 

 to lib. 11 oz. of your weight) may be had for 5 soldi (about 2d. English). 

 To secure them for the winter, they are dried in the sun and kept in paper 

 bags under the cover of the kitchen stove, or the hat-shaped fungi (pilei um- 

 braculi) are made into sauces, and used as they are wanted. The Marquis 

 Francis Cusani communicated to me, some time ago, the method practised by 

 the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of Salo, called the Riviera, of cultivating 

 mushrooms ; and, as I consider it of some importance, I send it to you. In the 

 district of Salo there grows a great number of laurels (Xaurus nobilis), of the 

 berries of which an oil is made, which, as you know, is used in the manufacture 

 of cloths, and particularly those of Schio (a town in the Lombardo- Venetian 

 kingdom, province of Vicenza). The proprietors, who trade in them, after 

 crushing the berries in the press, leave the refuse in heaps, making use of it 

 for manure. Ten or twelve years ago, some one observed that his heaps of 

 crushed berries produced tufts of fungi, and he wished to try whether they 

 were poisonous or not. The experiment was first tried on dogs, when they 

 were found to be innoxious ; then the thought arose of forming artificial 

 mushroom beds, and, after various attempts, they were ultimately constructed 

 in the following manner : — 



A situation was chosen between the west and the north, in a soil free from 

 clay, when a trench was dug 3 Milanese braccie square; (5 ft. 9 in. of your mea- 

 sure), and 2 braccie (3 ft. 10 in.) deep. The bottom of the trench was beaten 

 down, so as to render it hard, then a layer of crushed laurel berries was laid 

 in it, which was also beaten down ; after which a layer of earth and proceed- 

 ing in the same way, always beating down, till about four layers of earth and 

 berries had been deposited, when the trench was filled to a level with the soil. 

 In the space of a year, in October, the mushrooms appear two or three in a 



f f 2 



