Monograph of the Truffles

...whose observations, specifically regarding organization, offer a unique example of accuracy, which none of the more recent authors have yet been able to surpass.

The Italian Micheli (12), to whom the writings of Geoffroy were not known, better defined several things pertaining to the organization of the Truffle.

Bradley, who came before Micheli, and subsequently Bomarius and Hyllius, who discussed the same subject much later than the editions of Micheli, added hardly anything to the observations of Geoffroy.

Count de Borch (13), investigating the organization of that most delicious Piedmontese Truffle in the year 1780, not yet accustomed to microscopic observations, suffered hallucinations and imagined and painted many things.

Bulliard (14) also presented a history of the Truffle in the year 1791; and he attempted to illustrate its microscopic organization with icons. He was far, however, from clearly understanding the true structure of the Truffle, which Geoffroy and Micheli had partly handed down. Since he subjected partially dried Truffles to examination, he could distinguish parts less distinctly than they are in the living state.

Very recently, finally, Turpin (15) persuaded himself that he had investigated the organization of the Truffle more deeply. And Leman (16) certainly showed that he had snatched the palm from the others with these words: original: "C'est à M. Turpin qu'on doit enfin une connaissance juste de la structure des Truffes." "It is to Mr. Turpin that we finally owe a just knowledge of the structure of Truffles." If, however, you examine the work of Turpin attentively, and if you are completely free from the hypothesis of the Author's ideas, you will find nothing, apart from the names, that had not already been noted by Geoffroy, Micheli, or Bulliard. Nor are his icons the unique value of the work, as some have asserted, and they are not commendable in every respect. For if you except a few of them that show the parts of reproduction magnified by the microscope, and which had already been handed down by Micheli and Hyllius—less elegantly indeed, yet diligently enough—the remainder are not even to be compared with those of Bulliard, from whom they were otherwise borrowed (17).