When thoroughly ripe, a bright red covering hides,
Itself did with its bloody blossoms clothe.[[1465]]
Other garden herbs were the cumin, the seed of which was sown with abuse and curses,[[1466]] the sperage-berry, the dittander, or pepperwort, turnips,[[1467]] and parsnips, (found wild in Dalmatia,)[[1468]] with onions, garlic, and leeks.[[1469]] For these last Megara was famous, as Attica was for honey, which suggested to the Athenians an occasion of compliment to themselves,[[1470]] it having been a saying among them, that they were as superior to the Megareans as honey is to garlic and leeks.
The cultivation of that species of leek called gethyllis was carried to great perfection at Delphi,[[1471]] where it was an established custom, evidently with a view to the improvement of gardening, that the person who, on the day of the Theoxenia,[[1472]] presented the largest vegetable of this kind to Leto should receive a portion from the holy table.[[1473]] Polemo, who relates this circumstance says, that he had seen on these occasions leeks nearly as large as turnips. The cause of this ceremony was said to be, that Leto when great with Apollo longed for a leek.
Mushrooms[[1474]] were sedulously cultivated by the ancients, among whose methods of producing them were the following. They felled a poplar-tree[[1475]] and laying its trunk in the earth to rot, watered it assiduously, after which mushrooms, at the proper time sprung up. Another method was to irrigate the trunk of the fig-tree after having covered it all round with dung, though the best kind in the opinion of others were such as grew at the foot of elm and pine-trees.[[1476]] Those springing from the upper roots were reckoned of no value.
On other occasions[[1477]] they chose a light sandy soil accustomed to produce reeds, then burning brushwood, &c., when the air was in a state indicating rain, this ambiguous species of vegetable started forth from the earth with the first shower. The same effect was produced by watering the ground thus prepared, though this species was supposed to be inferior. In France, the most delicate sort of mushrooms are said to proceed from the decayed root of the Eryngium.
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]]
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.
[1241]. But see Dr. Nolan on the Grecian Rose, Trans. Roy. Soc. ii. p. 330, and Poll. i. 229.