Truffles are subterranean in their habits, their position beneath the soil varying from two or three inches to two feet in depth. They have neither root, stem nor leaf, and are of different shades of color, from light brown to black. They are more or lees globular in form and vary in size from a filbert to a large hen's egg. Their surface is knotty or warty and covered with a skin of net work which looks like veins. Truffles grow in pastures and on open downs, under trees and sometimes far away from them. They prefer loose soils and affect the neighborhood of oaks, beeches and chestnuts, but they do not thrive well in thick woods. They are common in Central and Southern Europe, particularly in this country, where the Poitou and Perigord districts are most prolific, and Italy, where Piedmont carries of the palm. The French truffles are decidedly superior to those of any country, but they vary in flavor according to locality. Up in the neighborhood of Nancy or Bar-le-Duc they are grayish in color and nearly tasteless; down near Grenoble, Valence and Avignon they have a musky taste; in Burgundy they are smaller, dry and have a flavor of resin, but the Peri-gord truffle is the kind that makes one's mouth water to think of it. Did you ever eat a Perigord pie? Well, without the presence of the thin slices of the Perigord tuber that delicious pate de foie gras would lose half its value. I have a loving remembrance of the plat de resistance of our national Thanksgiving Day, for a truffled turkey is quite a different bird from that stuffed with bread crumbs, sausage meat, boiled chestnuts and many other things. In the northern woods they are hunted for with dogs, but down in Perigord they train pigs for this purpose. It seems that pigs have better noses than dogs for this work. This is because the one likes truffles better as an article of food than the other, and a good truffle-hunting hog will fetch as much as $50. Of the same fungi family as truffles are the champignons, which are now also in season, but which are not so plentiful in France as in some parts of Russia, where they are said to form the principal staples of food with the peasantry.