BOTANY tracts of woodland, extending once from Wansford to Market Har- borough, with many outlying enclosures, yield a never-failing source of interest to the cryptogamic botanist in the variety of fungi, and amongst them many of extreme rarity, of which I will only mention at present Agaricus racemosus, which on the same stem produces two different kinds of fruit, and Agarkus Loveianus, which is parasitic on the pileus of one of our best edible fungi, A. nebularis. . . . The very numerous addition: which have been made to our list of species recorded by myself and Mr. Broome in the Annals of Natural History, amounting nearly to two thousand, have been supplied in great measure from these districts, and other parts of the county are daily yielding a fresh harvest." A further reference is of still greater interest. ' I turn to a very interesting class of fungi, and of some importance in an economical point of view, viz. the truffles, whether belonging to the normal group or to those which have been called false truffles — agreeing in their hypogsous habit, but differing altogether in structure. It was once thought that no esculent truffles were to be found in the county, except artificially introduced ; their occurrence at Rushton in the early part of the last century was supposed to have arisen from trees introduced in the plantations from France, but I have seen Tuber cestivutn in the greatest profusion at Apethorpe, and it is well known that the late Mr. Isted collected truffles in some abundance near Northampton. We do not possess at present the black truffle of France, but Tuber cestivutn is not to be despised when in good condition, and indeed is almost the only kind which appears in the London markets, principally from the chalk dis- tricts. No one, as far as I know, has used truffle dogs systematically, with a view to ascertain how far the search for truffles in Northampton- shire would prove remunerative, as it does in Berkshire and Kent. I have seen truffles at Milton, and hear of them elsewhere, as at Norman- ton, in the neighbouring county of Rutland, and though I have myself had no help except the diligent use of the rake, I have found many species, and amongst them a very remarkable form abounding in a milky fluid. Amongst them only one is of sufflcient size and of delicate flavour enough to make it worth collecting as a culinary article ; but under the oaks at Rockingham the large white truffle, belonging to a distinct genus, has been found abundantly, and though not equal to the common summer truffle, it, or a closely allied species, is collected abundantly in the north of Africa, and Mrs. Lloyd Wynne, who has done so much for mycology, saw it plentifully about Damascus.' "^ 1 "Journ. Northants Nat. Hist. Soc, vol. ii. p. i6o (1882). ' Lot. cit. pp. 160, 161. 85
