HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE- GOSSI P. 



241 



HISTOBY OF OTJE CULTIVATED VEGETABLES. 



No. XIII.— ASPARAGUS. 



HIS delicious 

 vegetable is sup- 

 posed to have 

 come into use 

 as food about 

 two hundred 

 years before the 

 Christian era ; 

 its excellent qualities are said 

 to have been made known by 

 that most distinguished and 

 ancient writer on agriculture, 

 the elder Cato ; he has treated 

 no subject with greater care, 

 the last chapter of his work 

 being devoted to this vege- 

 table. It appears to have been 

 known to the ancients as 

 growing wild, under the name 

 of Corruda. Cato advises the 

 sowing of the seed of this plant in the beds 

 of the vine-dressers' reeds, which are cultivated 

 in Italy for the support of the vines ; and that 

 they should be burnt in the spring of the third 

 year, as the ashes would act as a manure to the 

 future crop. He also recommends that the 

 plants be renewed after eight or nine years. 

 Athenaeus, who wrote about the third century, tells 

 us that this plant was divided into two varieties, 

 the Mountain and the Marsh; and that in some 

 parts of Libya they attained the thickness of a 

 Cyprian reed, and were several feet in height; he 

 also informs us that the plant was used as a remedy 

 in all diseases. But Diphilus, a physician who 

 lived about the same time, and the author of a 

 work, " On Diet fit for Persons in Good and Bad 

 Health," declares that asparagus was very hurtful 

 to the sight. Pliny states that asparagus, which 

 formerly grew wild, so that every man might gather 

 it, was in his time carefully cherished in gardens, 

 particularly at Ravenna, where the cultivated plant 

 was so large that three heads would weigh a pound, 

 No. 131. 



and were sold for an as (about three farthings) ; but 

 according to Martial, those grown at Ravenna were 

 no better than the wild. 



The Roman cooks used to choose the finest heads 

 of this vegetable, and dry them ; and when wanted 

 for the table put them into hot water and let them 

 boil quickly for a few minutes : hence the proverb, 

 " Citius quam asparagi coquentur " — {Do it quicker 

 than you can cook asparagus),— when anything was 

 required in haste. Suetonius informs us in his 

 Life of Augustus that this was a favourite expres- 

 sion of that emperor, when lie wished that any 

 affair might be concluded without delay. Pliny 

 states that the uncultivated kinds grew upon the 

 mountains in different countries, and that the 

 plaius of Upper Germany arc full of it. Juvenal, 

 in a description of a dinner given to a friend, 

 mentions the mountain asparagus : — ■ 



" Asparagus besides 

 Picked by my bailiff's plain but cleanly bride, 

 Who, when the wheel's domestic task is o'er, 

 Culls from the hills my vegetable store." 



It was believed by the ancients that if a person 

 anointed himself with a liniment made of asparagus 

 and oil, the bees would not approach or sting him. 

 They also had another absurd idea, that pounded 

 rams' horns buried in the ground would produce 

 this vegetable. 



We cannot trace the cultivation of asparagus in 

 England ; it is evidently indigenous to the ceuntry, 

 for Gerard states that the manured or garden aspa- 

 ragus, which comes up of the size of the largest swan's 

 quill, is the same as the wild, but, like other vege- 

 tables, made larger by cultivation. The wild, he 

 says, is "found in Essex, in a meadow adjoining 

 a mill beyond a village called Thorpe, and also at 

 Singleton, not far from Curbie, and in the meadows 

 about Moulton, in Lincolnshire; likewise it growetb. 

 in great plenty near unto Harwich." The same 

 author informs us that in Queen Elzabeth's time it 

 was sodden in flesh-broth, or boiled in fair water 

 and seasoned with oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper, 



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