Sept. 1, 1865.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 
ON TRUFFLES. 79 
cotton-growing countries cannot do without British machinery, and the 
result in Egypt shows what the demand upon our engineers is likely to 
become. We have not yet reached, if it be indeed possible that we 
shall in this century ever reach, our maximum production of cotton 
goods, for the demand is constantly increasing, and every spindle manu- 
factured corresponds but to the natural increase of the means of supply. 
English engineers when abroad are often struck by the adaptability 
shown by people of inferior civilization in the management of 
machinery. On many of the Egyptian cotton farms, the engine- 
drivers, firemen, and even those entrusted with the repairs of the 
engines, are Arabs. As for repairs, it has not yet apparently occurred 
to the Egyptian mind that they are requisite. In many cases, as soon 
as a fire-box is burnt out, or a cylinder scratched so as to defy the care 
of the driver in adjusting his packing, the engine is practically con- 
demned, being left out in the weather, and a new one ordered, we wull 
say from England. This may not seem a matter of regret here — although 
even those who thus obtain orders which ought not to have been given, 
must know that it is for their own interest, in the long run, that their 
customers should be careful, economical people, as if they are not they 
cannot go on for ever ordering machinery and paying their debts. But 
it is likely that engine-mending, like engine-driving, will yet be learned 
by the Arabs. — ' Engineer.' 
ON TRUFFLES AND TRUFFLE CULTURE. 
BY C. E. BROOME. 
The numerous varieties of fungi that are exposed for sale in the 
markets of France and Italy must induce a feeling of surprise that so 
little attention has been paid to their culture by the horticulturists 
both of Great Britain and the Continent. The mushroom is the only 
species at all commonly made use of in this country ; the Blewitt may 
sometimes, indeed, be seen in Covent Garden, but it is a species far 
inferior in flavour to many others of our fungi, and it is certainly not 
the produce of our gardens. Truffles, which are frequently seen, and so 
highly esteemed in Continental markets as to command a high price, are 
comparatively rarely to be met with in our own, and even Covent 
Garden can boast but of one native kind, and that an inferior one — viz., 
luber cestivum. There are, however, various reasons for this neglect of 
nature's benefits that operate with us, that do not apply with equal force 
to our Continental neighbours, such as distressing cases of poisoning 
from the indiscriminate use of fungi gathered by persons ignorant of 
the qualities of the various species, a danger in great measure guarded 
