HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



241 



THE HISTOEY OF OUE CULTIVATED VEGETABLES. 



No. VI.— THE CARROT {Baucus Carota). 



'HE next vegetables 

 most in use, after 

 those already de- 

 scribed, are per- 

 haps carrots and 

 parsnips, both of 

 which appear to 

 be indigenous to 

 Britain. They be- 

 .-^Tj,^, ^/r- c/iNv^r' '°^? ^^ ^^^^ exten- 



\!is4^ 'T-yflt,. O tfe sive order, tiie TJmhellifera, 

 which contains a large num- 

 ber of poisonous and delete- 

 rious plants, such as the 

 Hemlock {Conium niacula- 

 ti'.ni). Fools' Parsley {.Ellmsa 

 Vynapium), &c., as well as 

 many species of harmless and 

 wholesome vegetables. 



The Carrot was known to 

 the ancient Greeks and 

 Romans. Theophrastus 

 states, in the ninth book 

 of his "History of Plants," 

 that carrots grew in 

 Arcadia, but that the best are found in Sparta. 

 Petronius Diodotus, a Greek physician who lived in 

 or before the first century after Christ, and is said 

 to have written a work on botany, mentions four 

 kinds of this root, but there is some reason to 

 think he includes the parsnip with them. Pliny 

 states that the best kind of carrots in his time 

 came from Candia, and the next to them were 

 grown in Achaia. This author observes that the 

 root bears a similar degree of resemblance to the 

 parsnip, and that, in whatever country tliey grow, 

 the best are produced in sound dry ground, and 

 that wild carrots are to be found in most countries, 

 but never in poor soils. This vegetable is minutely 

 described by Dioscorides (a physician and botanist 

 who lived in the time of Nero) ; he states that it 

 was reared in gardens on account of its esculent 

 No. 119. 



root. It is difficult to trace the progress of the 

 carrot since that period, but it appears to have been 

 always an object, of cultivation among various na- 

 tions. We are indebted for its introduction to the 

 Flemings, who, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 

 sought refuge in England from the insupportable 

 tyranny of their Spanish master, Philip II. Find- 

 ing the soil about Sandwich, in Kent, very favourable 

 for the cultivation of the carrot, the emigrants soon 

 engaged in its production on that spot. The Eng- 

 lish, whose knowledge of horticulture was at that 

 time extremely circumscribed, were in this case 

 well pleased to add another edible vegetable to the 

 scanty list which were then under general cultiva- 

 tion. The carrot, therefore, unlike the turnip, 

 grew quickly into esteem, and being made an object 

 of careful cultivation, was very shortly naturalized 

 throughout the island. Gerard calls these plants 

 Baucus Cretensis verus, or Candle carrots, and says 

 that " the true Daucus of Dioscorides does not grow 

 in Candia only, but is found upon the mountains of 

 Germany, upon the Jura, and about Geneva, from 

 whence it hath been sent and conveyed by one 

 friendly herbalist unto another into sundry regions." 

 He adds that in his time the carrot was most com- 

 monly boiled to be eaten with fat meat, but he did 

 not esteem it to be a very nourishing food. 



In its wild state the carrot has a tough root of a 

 whitish colour, and is very common on calcareous 

 soils, where it is easily recognized in the early 

 summer by its concave umbels, resembling in shape 

 a bird's nest; hence the origin to one of its common 

 names. The Howers, which are white, are succeeded 

 by fruit covered with prickles. Many attempts in 

 former days have been made by Miller aud other 

 horticulturists to change by culture the wild carrot 

 into the esculent one, but they were unsuccessful. 

 Perhaps the cultivated one was first fostered into 

 its present value under a warmer temperature than 

 Britain. A writer in the Gardener's ChroHicle 

 (1865, p. 1154) states that he had procured in a few 

 generations from wild kinds large, fleshy, fibreless 



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