[2] At from twenty to thirty baiocchi, _i. e._ at about 1 _s._ 3 _d._ a pound. [3] The population of Rome is only 154,000; that of Naples, 360,000; and that of Venice, 180,000. [4] The Chinese present a striking contrast with ourselves in the care which they bestow on their esculent vegetation. “Some days since, M. Stanislas Julien presented to the Academy of Sciences, at Paris, a Chinese work, which merits a word or two of notice in the present circumstances of agricultural Europe. It is a treatise, in six volumes, with plates, entitled ‘The Anti-Famine Herbal;’ and contains the descriptions and representations of four hundred and fourteen different plants, whose leaves, rinds, stalks, or roots are fitted to furnish food for the people, when drought, ravages of locusts, or the overflow of the great rivers have occasioned a failure of rice and grain. Of this book the Chinese Government annually prints thousands, and distributes them gratuitously in those districts which are most exposed to natural calamities. Such an instance of provident solicitude on the part of the Chinese Government for the suffering classes may be suggestive here at home. A more general knowledge of the properties and capabilities of esculent plants would be an important branch of popular education.”—_Athenæum_, Nov. 16, 1846. [5] There are three kinds of esculent funguses in Italy to which the epithet _albus_ might apply, viz. the _Amanita alba_, of Persoon, the _Lycoperdon Bovista_, Linn. (or common puff-ball), and _Agaricus campestris_, Linn. (our common mushroom). The first kind grows in woods, and the second in dry uncultivated spots, whereas Ovid mentions these in conjunction with the Mallow (_Malva_), which grows in moist meadow-land; it is probable, therefore, that he here alludes to the _Pratajolo_, or meadow mushroom, or to that variety of it called from its whiteness “boule de neige.” [6] Etymol. _ad locum_. [7] Well-fed domestic pigs, on the authority of a friend, refuse it; but possibly, in the absence of full supplies of corn, they might be less dainty. [8] Vittadini assures us that the “slips of dried boletus, sold on strings, are as frequently from these kinds as from the _Boletus edulis_ itself; notwithstanding which, no accident was ever known to happen from the indiscriminate use of either.” [9] Dioscorides, who lived in the time of Nero, says that pigs dig up “truffles” in spring. Matthiolus, in his commentaries, speaks of an inferior, smooth-barked, red truffle known to the ancients, to which the above remark of Dioscorides perhaps applies; certainly it does _not_ apply to the black truffle, which begins to come into the Roman market in November, and is over long before the spring.