weeds. Dandelion leaves were used as salad,
as they are to this day in the north, and the
blanched roots served the place of endive;
winter cress was also a common salad; so
was rocket, which is still used in Italy;
bulbous chæropyllued, or chervil, and corn-
salad, a valerian, were the ancient lettuces;
France, the country of gastronomics,
paramount above all, knows the value of
both, though we have turned them out
among the rank and file of weeds. The
Viennese are notorious consumers of chervil.
Rampion was a salad, so were sorrel leaves;
common Alexanders did duty for celery;
and skirret, a poor, rank water-parsnip, was
eaten cold with oil and vinegar, or boiled, like
the cultivated civilised parsnip of modern
tables. By the way, parsnip, stripped in
long, thin strips, and fried in batter, is
infinitely superior to parsnip plainly boiled,
even with melted butter in addition. Monk's
rhubard was used as spinach; and even after
the introduction of spinach in thirteen
hundred and fifty-one, some feeble-minded
individuals sought to restore it to its former
place, to the prejudice of the new plant:
English mercury—good King Henry, or
goose-foot—is still much cultivated in lieu of
the same: Lincolnshire being especially
notorious for its wealth in mercury, and its
dearth of spinach. Vetches were ancient peas
and beans; the leaves of the pepperwort, or
poor man's pepper, were used instead of our
modern East Indian spice; parsley was a
favourite salad, and young nettles made a
recherché dish of greens. Borage leaves were
used for soup, and the beautiful blue flowers
of borage were used for salad and wine,
to strengthen the heart. The sea-cabbage,
or colewort, was the cabbage most in request;
and scorzonera, or viper's-grass, was eaten
freely as an antidote to snake bites, actual,
or possible. Hume says that "it was not till
the end of the reign of Henry the Eighth that
any salads, carrots, turnips, or other edible
roots, were produced in England; the little of
these vegetables that was used, was imported
from Holland and Flanders. Queen Catherine,
when she wanted a salad, was obliged to
despatch a messenger hither on purpose."
But he forgets the common roots and plants
which we have now disregarded—more's
the pity in some instances; and how the
poor made up for the loss of foreign
esculents, by the use of native weeds.

Of fruits, we have very few of home
produce; even the commonest have been
transformed out of all likeness with the original
stock, partly by cultivation, and partly by
the introduction of foreign sorts; so that it
can scarcely be said of any of them, that they
are purely native. Gooseberries came
originally from Siberia; currants, though
indigenous, have been so re-crossed with stocks
from America, and the south of Europe, that
it would be hard to say how much of native
juice is left in them. Black currants are
wholly American; and the pink, or champagne,
are French. Strawberries are indigenous;
and are said to have been under cultivation
ever since the time of Richard the Second. But,
John Tradescant the elder, who was gardener
to Charles the First in sixteen hundred and
twenty-nine, and who knew every flower, and
herb, and tree, by heart, first saw the strawberry
plant, as a cultivated and cherished
plant, in a woman's garden near Plymouth. Her
little daughter had seen it growing wild in the
woods, and had transplanted it to the home
garden for sake of its beautiful flower and
fruit. If it had been in anything like general
cultivation before then, Tradescant, the
Paxton of those days, would have surely
known of it. Afterwards, Miller saw it in
Hyde Park and Hampstead Woods; and
gradually it has become a prime public
favourite. The hautboy is said to have come
from America. Is it not rightly hautbois, or
from the high woods? The wood strawberry
is in much esteem in France, and the high
wood would naturally be the best flavoured.
Raspberries are indigenous, too, but, like
currants, have been crossed and cultivated,
till little of the original is left. Bilberries
are wild now, and ever have been; so are
cranberries; but the best cranberries come
from America; barberries are all over
Europe, but they were not originally wild in
England. Pears came from the south of
Europe to France, thence to England; so did
the best kinds of apples, though we have our
native crab in its full perfection of sourness
and indigestibility. The bullen is native and
wild; so is the sloe; but the real ripe purple
plum came from Asia to Europe, passing
from Syria to Greece, thence to Italy, and
from Italy everywhere. The greengage is
French, as, indeed, are most of the best
varieties of almost every fruit. Cherries are
wild in England as in other parts of Europe,
but the best sorts are English neither by
origin nor by cultivation. It is said that
cherries were first cultivated in the time of
Henry the Eighth; there is written evidence,
however, that they were cried about by
hawkers before the middle of the fifteenth
century; for, Lydgate, the black Benedictine
of Bury St. Edmund's, who lived in the
earlier part of the fifteenth century, says in
his poem of Lickpenny:

"Hot pescode own (one) began to cry,
Straberrys rype and cherries in the ryse."

Our best varieties came from Spain and
France; and the finest we have are to be
found in Kent, that most beautiful garden of
England. Apricots came from Armenia.
They were known to the ancients, and are
mentioned by Dioscorides. Breda, Rome,
and Turkey, supplied us with our best kinds;
Portugal sent us quinces; the south of
Europe, Germany, and America, medlars; the
East, peaches and nectarines; the south
of Europe the sorb apple, or service-tree. In