Retrospective Criticism. 205 



doing, in place of an additional number of young shoots pushing afterwards 

 (which is the inevitable result of the two-inch system, if the tree is in a healthy 

 state), I get two or three strong fruit-buds formed at the base of each shoot 

 so treated. 



I have two walls whose joint lengths make 360 yards, literally covered with 

 gooseberries (comprising, perhaps,from fifty to sixty distinct varieties of the finest 

 Lancashire, and other sorts equally good), that 1 have treated in exactly the 

 same manner since I first planted them, nine years since, and have succeeded 

 beyond my expectation. From one of these walls, I have gained the first 

 prize, six years in succession, at the Aberdeenshire Horticultural Society's 

 competition in July each year. — James Wright. Westjield, Dec. 30. 1837. 



Bernholz's Mode of growing Truffles. (Vol. XIII. p. 408.) — The natural 

 history of the truffle, given in the September Number of this Magazine, 

 contains much information that must be useful to such as may attempt 

 to cultivate that highly prized substance. But, after reading the treatise 

 of A. Von Bernholz on their cultivation, 1 am sadly afraid he knows little 

 more than I do. But the subject has enjoyed a sufficient quantum of repose, 

 and my remarks may, perhaps, induce some of your abler correspondents to 

 commence a discussion that may lead to the desired result. Had A. Von 

 Bernholz's treatise been the result of practice, I think he would have con- 

 veyed a more accurate idea of the nature and culture of truffles than he has 

 done. He goes on deploring the ignorance of former days, and glorying in the 

 superior or perfect knowledge of his own time, when the nature of truffles is 

 perfectly understood, the proper place assigned them in the scale of creation, 

 and their culture a mere matter of course. Thus we follow him, expecting 

 that at every turn the grand secret is going to burst upon us ; but, after all, 

 we are obliged to rest satisfied with assertions, where the record of a few 

 simple facts would outweigh all the pretence in the world. And, if I may be 

 allowed to reason upon what appears to be a most unreasonable subject, I 

 would say that there is by far too much stress laid upon a strict imitation of 

 nature in forming the artificial bed. Supposing a bed formed upon these prin- 

 ciples were to succeed, it would go far enough to show that truffles might be 

 cultivated, but it would not answer the purpose of the cultivator. He will be 

 expected to raise from a few square yards the produce of many acres, and to 

 have them at all seasons ; therefore, a bed formed of very diiferent materials, 

 and vastly richer than the natural one, placed where a proper temperature may 

 at all times be maintained, will most probably be found necessary to their suc- 

 cessful cultivation. There is, it seems, an acknowledged analogy between the 

 truffle and the mushroom : and what would the gardeners of the present day 

 think of the man that would recommend a strict imitation of nature in forming 

 a mushroom-bed ? The natural habit of the mushroom would be hard to 

 define; a certain degree of heat and moisture being all that appears necessary 

 to produce it in almost any substance, even in bricks and mortar. In num- 

 berless instances, we find mushrooms in pure light loam, lying high and dry, 

 and fully exposed to the weather, without shelter of any kind. Any person, 

 observing them in such a site, might suppose a pure unmixed soil, extreme 

 ventilation, and the broad glare of day, necessary to their production ; and we 

 need only contrast this with the fetid mass, the stagnate atmosphere, and total 

 darkness in which we grow such plenty of excellent mushrooms, to see how 

 far we may deviate from the ordinary course of nature, and still be eminently 

 successful. Then, as regards planting, and the nature of the things planted : 

 after all the lucid explanations given, I confess that I still see very dimly. If 

 they are hydatids produced in the upper strata of earth, why plant truffles ? 

 The earth supposed to contain the latent germs would be more likely to 

 succeed if they are its spontaneous production, not the progeny of each other. 

 If produced irom offsets, or anything connected with their predecessors, a 

 full-grown well-ripened truffle would be more likely to contain these, what- 

 ever their nature, than one that had been disturbed by transplanting (al- 



