This vegetable appears to have been a favourite dish among the ancients, together with the truffle,[1478] eaten both cooked and raw;[1479] and the morrille.[1480] That particular kind, called geranion, is the modern crane’s bill. The Misu, another sort of truffle,[1481] grew chiefly in the sandy plains about Cyrene, and, as well as the Iton,[1482] found in the lofty downs of Thrace, was said to exhale an agreeable odour resembling that of animal food. These fanciful luxuries, which were produced among the rains and thunders[1483] of autumn, continued to flourish in the earth during a whole year, but were thought to be in season in spring. Truffle-seed was usually imported from Megara, Lycia, and Getulia; but in Mytelene the inhabitants were spared this expense, their sandy shores being annually sown from the neighbouring coast by the winds and showers. It has been remarked, that neither truffles nor wild onions were found near the Hellespont.[1484] ----- Footnote 1478: Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 189. Footnote 1479: This was more particularly the case on the Tauric Chersonese.—Theoph. Hist. Plant. vii. 13. 8. Footnote 1480: Theophrast. Hist. Plant. i. 10. 7. Footnote 1481: Theoph. Hist. Plant. i. 6. 13. Footnote 1482: Athen. ii. 62. Footnote 1483: Plut. Sympos. iv. 2. 1. who relates that the ὕδνα attained to a very large size in Elis. Footnote 1484: Vid. Theoph. Hist. Plant. i. 6. 13. ----- What methods the ancients employed for discovering the truffle, which grows without stem or leaf in a small cell beneath the surface of the earth, I have nowhere seen explained. At present[1485] their existence is said to be detected in Greece, not by the truffle hound, but by the divining rod. On the dry sandy downs of the Limousin, Gascogne, Angoumois, and Perigord, as well as in several parts of Italy,[1486] they are collected by the swineherds; for the hogs being extremely fond of them utter grunts of joy, and begin to turn up the earth as soon as they scent their odour, upon which the herdsmen beat the animals away, and carefully preserve the delicacy for the tables of the rich. At other times they are discovered in the following manner: the herdsmen stooping down, and looking horizontally along the surface of the Landes, observe here and there, on spots bare of grass and full of fissures, clouds of very diminutive flies hatched in the truffle, and still regaling themselves with its perfume. In some parts of Savoy they have been found two pounds in weight. ----- Footnote 1485: Walp. Mem. i. 284. Footnote 1486: Valmont de Bomare, Dict. D’Hist. Nat. t. ii. p. 21, seq. ----- CHAPTER III. VINEYARD, VINTAGE, ETC.