260 FUNGI. 
no attempt was made to produce truffles by placing ripe speci- 
mens in the earth, but they sprang up themselves from spores 
probably contained in the soil. The young trees were left 
rather wide apart, and were cut, for the first time, about the 
twelfth year after sowing, and afterwards at intervals of from 
seven to nine years. Truffles were thus obtained for a period 
of from twenty-five to th‘rty years, after which the plantations 
ceased to be productive, owing, it was said, to the ground being 
too much shaded by the branches of the young trees. It is the 
opinion of the Messrs. Tulasne that the regular cultivation of 
the truffle in gardens can never be so successful as this so-called 
indirect culture at Lonudun, but they think that a satisfactory 
result might be obtained in suitable soi!s by planting fragments 
of mature truffles in wooded localities, taking care that the other 
conditions of the spots selected should be analogous to those of 
the regular truffle-grounds, and they recommend a judicious 
thinning of the trees and clearing the surface from brushwood, 
etc., which prevents at once the beneficial effects of rain and of 
the direct sun’s rays. A truffle collector stated to Mr. Broome 
that whenever a plantation of beech, or beech and fir, is made on 
the chalk districts of Salisbury Plain, after the lapse of a few 
years truffles are produced, and that these plantations continue 
productive for a period of from ten to fifteen years, after which 
they cease to be so. 
M. Gasparin reported to the jurors of the Paris Exhibition of 
1855, concerning the operations of M. Rousseau, of Carpentras, 
on the production of oak traffles in France. The acorns of ever- 
green and of common oaks were sown about five yards apart. 
In the fourth year of the plantation three truffles were found; at 
the date of the report the trees were nine years old, and over a 
yard in height. Sows were employed to search for tue trufiles. 
Although these plantations consist both of the evergreen and 
common oak, truffles cannot be gathered at the base of the latter 
species, it so happening that it arrives later at a state of pro- 
duction. The common oak, however, produces trufiics like the 
evergreen oak, this report states, for a great number of the 
natural truffle-grounds at Vaucluse are planted with common 
