IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

Otago Witness, Issue 3610, 22 May 1923, Page 6

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

NEW ZEALAND TRUFFLES.

By

J. DRUMMOND.

F.L.S.. F.Z.S.

Tr G. H. Cunningham, Government Mycologist—his duties are to study the dominion’s fungi—has written from Wellington stating that a species of a true truffle, Tuber rapoodorum, has been found in New Zealand. Mr T Rodda and he collected it at Arataki, Hawke’s Bay, in January, 1922. Forty years ago, the late Mr T. Kirk, collected the same species in the Waimakiriri basin, Norlh Canterbury, and specimens of the spec.e.-; are in the museum of Victoria College, Wellington, but Mr Cunningham does not know by whom or where they were collected. It is easy to find mushrooms; as truffles are underground fungi, perfecting themselves beneath the surface, and do not disclose their presence to the eye they are found with difficulty. Truffles collected by Messrs Cunningham and Rodda at Arataki were buried about Sin in the ground under a willow, but they were “readily noticeable on account of their overpowering smell ” Truffle-hunting, probably, never will become popular in New Zealand, where even mushroom gathering is carried on dilatorily. A few truffle dogs seem to survive in England, and truffle-pigs still are kept in France. Dogs and pigs are the only animals trained for truffle-hunting. The true truffle-dog is described as almost a pure poodle, “a sharp, intelligent, quaint companion, with the homing faculty of a pigeon, and with an exquisite nose.” When it emells a truffle, it shows all the keenness of a spaniel. At.the place where a truffle

ties beneath the surface, the truffle-dog digs like a terrier at a rat’s hole. If it is a well-trained hunter, and if left alone it will carry the truffle to its master, but he usually forks up the truffle and rewards his servant with a piece of cheese. The dog’s training is arduous and systematic. As the dog usually is delicate on account of i breeding the time spent on training it often is wasted. In France, sows about five months old are used in preference to dogs. A sow can scent a truffle some 20ft away. Going quickly to the place, she digs with her snout. The light stroke of a stick on her nose prevents her from eating the truffle. Acorns or dry chestnuts are the reward of her efforts. When truffle hunting was in vogue in England, the simplest method of preparing the dish was to bury the truffles in hot wood ashes on an oldfashioned hearth, and roast them. For ragout, they were well washed, soaked in oil, cut into slices about a quarter of an inch thick, placed in a stewpan with oil or butter, and with salt, pepper and a little white wine, and the mass bound together, when cooked with the yolk of eggs. A very different fungus has come under Mr Cunningham’s attention. It is a new species of the amazing vegetable caterpillar, a fungus which attacks the caterpillars of several species of insects in the ground, destroys the caterpillars, transforms their bodies into vegetable matter, and sends a stem, with spore-cases on top, above the surface of the ground, the stem usually springing from the caterpillar’s head or the part that was a caterpillar’s head before the caterpillar was attacked by the fungus. The new species of vegetable caterpillar, tho sixth recorded in New Zealand, was found by Professor H. B. Kirk, Wellington, when he was searching for frogs on Stephen Island, in Cook Strait. This species of tho

vegetable caterpillar had attacked male and female grubs of an exceptionally large weta, a wingless insect with a formidable aspect, sometimes, but incorrectly, called a scorpion. The bird-cage fungus, basket fungus, lattice fungus, or devil’s purse, which has made its appearance this season in grassy places and freshly deposited earth, and amongst decaying leaves on forest floors, in lowland areas, is found also in Australia and Chili, and belongs to a genus that extends to Ceylon, iriouth America, the southern part of North America, Africa, Europe, and many tropical islands. The disagreeable smell of this junjus in its mature state, resembling decayed fish, attracts insects. Mr Cunningham states that the smell and other peculiarities are devices to ensure visits from insects and obtain dissemination of the spores. Great numbers of spores have been found to pass through the alimentary tracts of flies that have visited a bird-cage fungus; and experiments have shown that spores which pass through flies germinate sooner than spores disseminated in the usual way. The sudden appearance of the detached lattice-like structures ha s led to many conjectures as to their origin. Maoris attributed their origin to supernatural beings, or to the stars. Mr Cunningham supplies the official name of this common fungus, Clathrus cibarius. He very kindly has offered to name any fungi sent to him by readers of this column. His address is “The Biological Laboratory, Biological Department, Wellington.” “I have seen the North Island crow for the first time,” Mrs B. Halcombe wrote from Dartmoor, New Plymouth, on April 27. “It is a larger bird on tho wing than

I expected to see. As it was the middle of the nesting season, and the middle of the day, there was no song of crows in the bush; there were only odd calls, sufficient to show how liquid the song is. The native crows will sing again later, and wehope to hear them when next we go into their haunts. Residents of the suburbs of New Plyfnouth hear the notes of the Californian quail at this time of the year and right through our mild winter until the spring, and then silence until the autumn. Californian quail are very plentiful out of New Plymouth. At Urenui, about 20 miles away, there are many pheasants. A few native larks—ground larks, or pipits—are on the roads here, and we rejoiced to see a kingfisher sitting on our fence on many occasions this week.” The Indian minah, introduced into New Zealand from Australia, is one of the few birds that do not appeal to Mrs Haleombc: “Oh, the minahs! Whoever introduced these pests needs shaking. Such a noisy, discordant chattering all day, worse in the morning, unspeakable at night, when dozens of them are quarreling, talking, settling down, only to whizz up again and make more clamour! We awake early in the morning with stones rolling down the roof. What minalis do w’hen buildings is a puzzle; they seem to drop everything. All the gutter this year must, be netted because of the minahs. They are, I think, the only birds I ever disliked. The troublesome little sparrows have many redeeming points; the minahs have none.” The flights of starlings near New Plymouth have been described by Mr W. W. Smith, who watched “tens of thousands performing cloud-like gyrations around and above Moturoa Island.” Mrs Halcombe, adding to this, writes: “There are vast

flights of starlings every night. We can see the bg black clouds far away. They fly out to islands just off the breakwater, and nest in the ioose sandy soil there. Poor farmers; starlings are in such numbers, and so safe on the islands, that there’s no getting rid of them !” A short time before writing, Mrs Halcombe saw many iazy little slaty-blue backed penguins disporting themselves in tho water near New Plymouth. She has been told that a blue crane is on the coast. Her letter concludes: “We have an idea of going into the bush for 10 days or more in the spring, if it can be managed, to see what birds are there, and in W’hat numbers. If wo see anything of special interest, I shali let you know.”