also potata, and—like the French and
Germans earth-apples. Potato is our version
of the balata, or patata of the south.
Houghton says that in Ireland in sixteen
hundred and ninety-nine, they were roasted
or boiled, and eaten with butter and sugar;
it seems to have been quite of late years,
that anything like a rational or scientific
method of preparing them has been
discovered. And even now, few good plain
cooks understand the proper manner of cooking
them. You may find cooks who can make
exquisite sufflés, and delicious méringues, ice
puddings, vol-au-vents, and all the latest refinements
of the Café de Paris; but, to find one
who can properly cook a potato, is as difficult
as to discover a new planet, or a new pleasure.

The love-apple or tomata is of the same
tribe as the potato. Both are solanums, or
nightshades, and both came originally from
South America. Chops and tomata sauce
were not known two hundred years ago; and
the Pickwicks of that day ran one danger
the less. Jerusalem artichokes are
sunflowers—girasoles—from Brazil. Mr. John
Goodyer received in sixteen hundred and
seventeen, two small roots, no bigger than
hens' eggs, from Mr. Franquevill of London;
the one he planted, and the other he gave to
a friend. The root he planted, produced a
sufficient number to supply all Hampshire.
But, there is every reason to believe that they
were known in Queen Elizabeth's time, though
not generally cultivated, nor, indeed,
generally known. Society was neither so
communicative, nor so democratic as at present;
and, what the grandees and nobles got for
themselves, they did not seek to make
general among the people. At first,
Jerusalem artichokes were boiled tender,
then peeled, and stewed with butter, wine,
and spices; they were also made into pies,
with marrow, dates, ginger, raisins, sack, &c.
The French brought them into Europe from
Canada, but their original home was in
Brazil. The common artichoke—which is
only a more delicate kind of donkey's food
after all, for it is nothing but a thistle—was
evidently known to the Greeks and Romans;
but no one now can trace its birthplace. It
is found wild in the south of Europe, Italy,
Sicily, the south of France, &c.; but, it is a
wilding after transportation, not by the
dignity of vegetable autochthony. It is said
that its use had been forgotten in Italy
between the time of the Romans and the year
fourteen hundred and sixty-six, when one of
the Strozzi family brought to Florence some of
these dainty thistles from Naples, which had
just received a cargo of roots from the
Levant. The first artichokes seen in Venice,
says Hermolaus Barbaras, were seen in fourteen
hundred and seventy-three. The
artichoke is common in Persia; though it is said
to have been carried thither by the Carmelite
monks, who transplanted many of the
European garden vegetables to Iranstân.

Salsafy—goat's-beard, buck's-beard, Jack-
go-to-bed-at-noon, Joseph's Flower, Star of
Jerusalem—by what name soever it may
please the reader to designate it—came from
Siberia. It is not of any striking popularity
in England, but it is a more delicate kind of
parsnip in taste, and might be more
cultivated than it is, with advantage. The broad-
bean was originally an Egyptian; by the bye,
forbidden to the priests; but it is also found
in China and Japan, and has been known for
centuries, in Europe. The kidney-bean,
which means the scarlet-runner as well,
came from the East Indies; the delicious
pea is from the south of Europe, China,
Cochin-China, and Japan. The garden carrot
was brought from Aleppo, though we have
plenty of wild carrots in our wastes and
hedges; turnips are partly wild, and
partly from Sweden and Holland. Turnips
also were known to the Romans: were they
eaten with boiled beef and legs of mutton, by
those stately robbers in sandals and togas?
Parsnips are natives, improved by
cultivation; so are cabbages; but cauliflowers
were brought from Candia, Cyprus, and
Constantinople, to Italy, by the Venetians and
Genoese; and broccoli, or little sprouts, came
from Italy to France, towards the end of the
sixteenth century. Celery is native; good for
nothing wild, but, as we all know, one of the
most delicious of our vegetables when cared
for and cultivated. Cress, horse-radish, and
mustard, are partly native, and partly
foreign. Asparagus is doubtful. It is found
wild in some parts of England, and it also
comes from the East; but, it is not exactly
known whether our garden-beds are peopled
with improved Britons, or with foreigners.
Anyhow, they are peopled with esculents
which almost deserve the strange kind of
canonisation given to vegetables, as well as
to cows and birds, on the banks of old Nile.
Spinach is in the same condition of
uncertainty. It was known to the Arabian
physicians; and probably by them—through the
Moors—introduced into Spain, whence it
spread through Europe; but who was the
benefactor to the human race who first
brought it into use we have no means of knowing.
Neither can we raise a monument to
the memory of that sainted man, who once
eat a cucumber when travelling in the far East,
and, fired by a noble patriotism, pocketed the
seeds for the everlasting delectation of the
west. Radishes come from China, Cochin-
China, and Japan; beet-root comes from the
sea-coast of the south of Europe; endive,
from China, Japan, and Italy; vegetable-
marrow (squash), from America; lettuce, from
the Levant in the second instance, but in the
first unknown; garlic, from the East; shallots
from Palestine; and onions from Spain and
Portugal.

Before all these importations were made,
substitutes and predecessors were found in
plants which now rank little higher than