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Show Truffles Sows Are 'Bloodhounds' PARIS, FRANCE. There is a group of living creatures which has never had the rewards for its service to humanity properly standardized. These creatures are females of the pig family which, in bloodhound fashion, locate that delicacy of luxury-laden tables the truffle. The truffle a sort of undernourished under-nourished mushroom used chiefly chief-ly for a garnishing or a dressing, dress-ing, but of such superb odor and inspiring taste that it throws diners into ecstasies-belongs ecstasies-belongs to the region of France east of Bordeaux and known as Perigord. Farmers in sabots go out with their skilled sows to hunt for truffles. A highly sensitive pig, it is said, when brought to a woods where youngish oak trees are growing, will march, sraight as an arrow, to a spot in the leaf mold above the clay, apply its snout to the work of excavation excava-tion and in a little less than no time reward the wooden shoed owner with a succulent truffle. Never does a well trained pig make any effort to consume the delicacy it has brought from the earth. It simply lays the treasure at the master's feet. And now comes the reward. We find in a French reader for children that the master gives the pig a piece of bread for each truffle. In an encyclopedia we read that the reward is a piece of cheese, and in a garden book, that the pig's master gives it an I acorn or a chestnut. Is such a wage for highly skilled labor sufficient? In case you doubt that this prospecting for truffles is "highly skilled labor," remember that there are said to be a very few human hu-man beings, say one in 10,000,-000, 10,000,-000, who are also endowed with such sensitive nostrils as to detect de-tect the odor of a truffle below the ground. In England, terriers I are trained for the duty, and In Sardinia, goats. |