242 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



then served at men's tables for a salad. Evelyn, in 

 his "Acetaria" (1699), says, "that next to flesh no- 

 thing is so nourishing as asparagus ; it was some- 

 times eaten raw with oil and vinegar, but was more 

 delicate if speedily boiled, so as not to lose its co- 

 lour." He tells us that he did not think the large 

 Dutch kind, " which was raised in highly manured 

 beds, so sweet and agreeable as those of moderate 

 size, and yet to show what solum, coelum, and 

 industry will effect, the honourable and learned 

 Charles Hatton made my wife a present of 16 

 sparagus, the whole bundle containing only sixty, 

 weight 15 lb. and i. So allowing 4 oz. to each 

 sparagus, one was as much as one would desire to 

 eat, and what was most observable, they were not 

 raised or forced by any extraordinary compost, but 

 grown in a more natural, sweet, rich, and well- 

 cultivated soil about Battersea." Miller, in his 

 " Dictionary," states that a friend of his procured 

 some seed of the wild kind, which he cultivated 

 with great care in very rich ground, yet could not 

 get the roots to produce a stem more than half the 

 size of the garden kind which grew on the same 

 bed, but he always found the wild sort come up ten 

 days or a week earlier in the spring, and that the 

 shoots were exceedingly sweet. Leonard Meager, 

 in his "English Gardener," published iu 1683, 

 informs us, that in his time the London market was 

 well supplied with forced asparagus; the means 

 employed were by placing the roots on warm 

 manure-beds. Battersea, Mortlake, and Deptford 

 used to be the principal localities from which the 

 metropolis was supplied ; Mortlake alone, at one 

 time, had more than a hundred acres under this 

 /•rop, and a Mr. Grayson, of that place, once 

 produced a hundred heads that weighed 42 lb. 

 There are accounts of some very large heads of this 

 vegetable being produced on some parts of the 

 Continent ; thus, we read in Keysler's " Travels," 

 that at Darmstadt, in 1730, some large asparagus 

 was grown, the heads of some weighed half a 

 pound ; some hundreds of these heads were sent as 

 a present to the Elector Palatine. 



The asparagus trade in France is becoming of 

 more importance every year. The principal place 

 of its culture near Paris is Argenteuil, from which 

 place in 1820 about five thousand bundles were sent 

 to the market, but now the produce probably ex- 

 ceeds a million. It is grown to a very great size, 

 the maximum attained at the present time being 

 8 in. in circumference ; but a dish of such grass costs 

 40 to 50 francs. In the south of Erance this vege- 

 table is frequently grown between the vines. There 

 was an asparagus-growing company started at 

 Brunswick in 1S69 ; several hundred acres are 

 devoted to the cultivation of this vegetable, and it 

 bids fair to rival that of Argenteuil. This vegetable 

 might be cultivated in England with great success, 

 in soils consisting of little else than sea-sand, 



dressed annually with seaweed, on many spots on 

 the coast, that will hardly produce any other vege- 

 table. A few years since a very large variety was 

 introduced from America, under the name of Con- 

 nover's colossal asparagus. 



The wild asparagus is found in many parts of 

 Europe where the soil is light and containing an 

 amount of salt, which appears to be necessary for 

 this plant. The salt steppes of Russia, Mr. Loudon 

 tells us, are covered with it, and horses and oxen 

 eat it like grass. In England it is found growing 

 in Cornwall, Mullion Island, near Lizard's Point, 

 Kyname Cove, called Asparagus Island; also on 

 the western and south-western coast. Among the 

 various virtues attributed to this plant is one given 

 by Antonie Mizold, in the seventh century, who 

 states that if the root is put on a tooth that aches 

 violently, it causes it to come out without pain. The 

 sprouts contain a peculiar crystalline substance, 

 called asparagine, which was formerly used in medi- 

 cine, but is not now retained in the Pharmacopoeia. 

 Sometimes a decoction of the root is given as a 

 diuretic in dropsies. 



Loudon states that the flower-stalks of Orni- 

 thogalum are used in some parts of Gloucestershire, 

 and sold in Bath under the name of Prussian 

 asparagus ; also the stalks of " salsify." The mid-rib 

 of the beet is sometimes dressed as this vegetable ; 

 and the young buds of the hop are said to be 

 scarcely inferior in taste. The tender shoots of the 

 Typha, a kind of reed, are eaten by the Cossacks 

 like asparagus. Under the general name of aspa- 

 ragus the ancients were accustomed to class all 

 young sprouts of vegetables which were used in that 

 state. The word is almost literally Greek, signifying 

 a young shoot before it unfolds its leaves, as handed 

 down to us by Dioscorides. Gerard gives nearly 

 the same definition, but in English, he states, it is 

 called "sperage." Parkinson says our old English 

 writers " called asparagus ' sperage ' ; when these 

 names were vilely corrupted into ' sparrow-grass,' 

 and thence frittered down into ' grass,' I am un- 

 able to say" (Parkinson, "Paradisus"). Batty 

 Langley ("Principles of Gardening," published 

 1728) says, " the top of the bud is of the form of 

 a sparrow's bill, and from thence vulgarly called 

 'sparrow-grass,'" In Low Dutch it is called 

 " coralcrunt," or Herba Cor alii ; coral- wort, iu 

 respect to its red berries, the seeds of which have 

 been recommended as a substitute for coffee. The 

 young plants grown in pots make most beautiful 

 decorations for the room or dining-tables. 



Hampden G. Glasspoole. 



Protoplasm. — " Protoplasm seems to bear to 

 life the same relation that a conductor does to the 

 electric current." — Dr. Nicholson's Introduction to 

 Zoology. 



