THE TECHNOLOGIST. [Sept. 1, 1865; 
80 ON TRUFFLES. 
against abroad "by the appointment of an official person capable of deter- 
mining tlie noxious or innocent nature of the species brought for sale. 
What tends, however, still more perhaps to increase our objection to 
their use, is the natural inaptitude of our countrymen to acquire the art 
of cookery, which is a very important element in suiting these plants to 
human digestion ; added to which, there is the difficulty of adopting 
new customs, or changes of diet. Were a taste for these productions, 
however, once established, we should soon find numerous species brought 
forward as valuable additions to our means of sustenance. 
Notwithstanding that truffles have been considered articles of luxury, 
and have commanded a high price from the time of the Komans down 
to the present, and that it has ever been the aim of horticulturists to 
bring them into the number of regular garden crops, they seem hitherto 
to have defied all efforts to reclaim them, and to resemble, in their 
intractable disposition, the wild ass, " whose house has been made the 
wilderness, and the barren land his dwellings, who scorneth the multitude 
of the city, and the range of the mountains is his pasture." If this, then, 
be a correct representation ot their character, it is a question whether 
it would not be easier to cultivate them by assisting Nature in her 
own way, than to restrict her within our limits by forcing these denizens 
of the forest to occupy a place in our kitchen gardens. It would seem 
indeed, that the amount of shade they demand is such as to be incompa- 
tible with the requirements of a garden. But let us see what has been 
done hitherto in the various endeavours to grow truffles by the assistance 
of art. And here we cannot do better than give the information with 
which the Messrs. Tulasne present us in their beautiful work on 
Hypogaaous Fungi. They mention four species of truffles exclusively 
in use in France — viz., T. melanosporum, T. brumale, T. ceslivam, and 
T. mesentericum, of which two, or perhaps three, occur in Great Britain. 
Tuber cestivum is apparently the only species to be met with in a recent 
state in our shops ; T. meseiitericum may at times occur, but it has not 
yet been noticed there. 1. brumale, if our plant be identical with 
Tulasne' s, has hitherto been found in England of too small a size to be 
worth sending to market. In Italy there are other kinds, one of which, 
T. magnatum, commands a higher price than any other ; arid in the 
southern parts of Italy, Sicily, Syria, and Africa, another species, 
Serfezia leonis, is of common use as an article of food. 
The true truffles have rough seeds, which, seen under the older and 
imperfect microscopes, resembled somewhat a truffle in miniature, and 
early writers concluded that the mature plant was merely one of these 
seeds largely developed in all directions. The Tulasnes have proved, 
however, by careful observations that they germinate in the same way 
as do those of most other fungi — viz., by giving origin to delicate threads, 
which spread in the surrounding soil, and that from such threads the 
young truffles arise, probably after some kind of impregnation, which is 
as yet, notwithstanding the researches q£ recent observers, involved in 
