buy up and sell again, and the local
speculators, whether in Perigord, Dauphiny, or
Provence, are not over scrupulous. They have
divers modes of fraud which they frequently
employ to put off inferior merchandise instead
of first-rate, which the purchaser fancies he is
buying.

In the first place, they easily make large
truffles out of little ones. The process is
simple. They pin together, by means of
thorns or small wooden skewers, a number
of small truffles. The block of truffles once
formed, they fill up all the gaps with moist
earth; they cement with mastic or putty
every chink till the cluster of ordinary
truffles is taken for one enormous monster.
Truffle-fanciers swallow the bait. The
wonder circulates in the commercial world,
and is bought and sold again, like the Pigot
diamond. To the final consumer, when the
phenomenon is washed, is revealed the bitter
truth.

Although they refuse to grow on wet land
(as well as in ground that has been manured)
yet rainy summers and wet springs are
favourable to their development. If accounts
are correct, truffles must enter the
catalogue of plants gifted with the power of
motion. It has been remarked that in
August, when the truffle begins to ripen,
it rises nearer to the surface of the soil
which covers it. It even appears to mount
with an elasticity of sufficient force to cause
it occasionally to come out of the ground into
the open air. How this is effected has not
been stated. It is generally believed that if
truffles are once disturbed in the ground,
although they have no root-fibres, they cease
to grow, and remain stationary, imbibing no
further nutriment from the earth. They
seem to lie there like an animal in its matrix,
or a seed in its capsule. If left in quiet, they
increase insensibly. The season for truffle
digging is from the month of October to the
end of December, and sometimes even up to
February. If not gathered when arrived at
maturity, they rot, and their remains serve as
the means of reproducing a future generation
of tubers. At the beginning of summer—
sooner or later, according to the warmth of
the weather— the little truffles are found,
about the size of peas, reddish without and
white within. The subterranean peas gradually
increase in bigness. At a later period,
they are taken up in the shape of what are
called white truffles, which are immature,
and comparatively insipid in flavour. It has
always been considered impossible to propagate
truffles by artificial culture. It is nevertheless
stated that Madame Nagel, the
proprietress of the Château de la Moussière, at
Biziat, Canton of Pont-de-Vegle,has discovered
the solution of the problem. It is just,
however, to mention that the honour of the
discovery (if a discovery there be) is due to her
female servant, who advised Madame, in
eighteen hundred and fifty-one, to plant little
truffles, and the peelings of larger ones, at
the foot of a hornbeam-hedge which grew in
her garden. The attempt succeeded; the
truffles increased and multiplied, and, in
'fifty-three, many amateur gardeners belonging
to Mâcon verified the fact, and recorded
it in the journal of the horticultural society
of that town. The spell is therefore broken;
truffles have been made subjects of horticulture.
It now only remains to perfect the art
by carefully studying, in the localities
themselves, the nature of the soil where they grow
spontaneously, and the conditions most
favourable to their development.

In the kingdom of cooks, the truffle has
sometimes been unjustly considered as an
auxiliary only, and not as a principal. It has
been asserted, "The truffle is a perfume like
roses, thyme, vanilla, saffron, garlic, or lemon;
it ought, therefore, to be employed as a
substance communicating its special odour. Its
flesh is strengthless and insipid, nearly as
worthless as an orange from which the juice
has been squeezed." But—say French
culinary artists—the truffle being thus
inadequately appreciated, it is easy to conceive
into what serious errors cooks have fallen,
and why so many of the profession are
incompetent to dress the tubercule. Not to
recognise precious qualities in the flesh of the
truffle, not to consider it as capable of forming
a dish without any foreign aid, is a grand
and fatal mistake, which has prevented the
due enjoyment of the fungus. The French
are circumspect in communicating to strangers
their modes, however imperfect, of dressing
truffles. During the few years that the
truffle has become better known, there has
been much vain-boasting respecting modes of
preparation, which were stumbled on by
chance, and persevered in without attempting
to discover something better. Consequently,
the knowledge of truffles and their culinary
treatment is still in a melancholy and
benighted state in many countries of civilised
Europe. In England, scarcely any but French
cooks make use of truffles, which they
procure from France. Of course, those gentlemen,
when they emigrated, carried with them
the dark-age, barbarous methods. To the
evils of ignorance was joined the national
obstinacy, which will not be persuaded that
truffles do not want to enter into combination
with cayenne pepper, Durham mustard, and
high-spiced sauces, which deprive the truffles
—already injured by their long journey—of
whatever aroma is left remaining. It is only
lately that the English have pronounced in
favour of truffles, and that the consumption
has mounted beyond the merest trifle. All
the truffles consumed in England by the
gourmand world come from France. They
are sent over fresh during the season, and
are| afterwards preserved in bottles. The
fresh ones may be good; but the chances are
against the quality of those in bottles. In
general, the English are inferior connoisseurs