266 



HAUDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



1813-14," he writes, " has enabled me to decide this 

 question most positively and to name the parsnip 

 the only cultivated root which appears to defy all 

 cold. In the garden of a friend at Waltham Abbey a 

 crop of parsnip was suffered to continue in the ground 

 throughout the winter. That land is well known 

 to be wet meadow-land, and was frozen in a solid 

 mass to the depth of a foot or more. The roots 

 remained unhurt, and while I write (in the begin- 

 ning of April, 1814) they are all putting out their 

 new shoots." They also withstood the intense 

 frost of 1838 in the open ground. A very large 

 variety, with roots three to four feet long and three 

 inches in diameter, is much cultivated in Normandy 

 and the Channel Islands as food for cattle. As an 

 agricultural plant, it is not much cultivated in 

 England ; but in Jersey and Guernsey it forms one 

 of the most important crops, and the preparation of 

 the land, which requires deep ploughing, is one of 

 the most laborious tasks of the small farmers in the 

 early spring. One Jersey farmer is recorded to 

 have raised upwards of 14,000 lb. of parsnips upon 

 about a quarter of an acre of land. Very little 

 manure but seaweed is used ; still the quality of the 

 root is materially affected by the soil, and it exhausts 

 the laud more than the carrot. According to 

 Colonel de Couteur, the .weight of a good crop 

 varies from thirteen to twenty-seven tons per acre, 

 the latter quantity being sufficient to suppport 

 twelve Jersey cows for six months, with a mixture 

 of mangolds and turnips. Don states that in the 

 fattening of cattle, the parsnip is found equal if 

 not superior to the carrot, performing the business 

 with much expedition, and affording meat of an ex- 

 quisite flavour and of a highly juicy quality. The 

 leaves being more bulky than those of carrots, may 

 be mown off before taking up the roots and given 

 to cattle and horses, which will devour them 

 greedily. The parsnip yields a large quantity of 

 nourishing food for human kind. In the north of 

 Scotland, Neill observes, "they are often beat up 

 with potatoes and a little butter ; of this excellent 

 mess the children of the peasantry are very fond, 

 and they do not fail to thrive upon it." From the 

 same authority, we learn that in the north of 

 Ireland an agreeable beverage is prepared from the 

 roots brewed with hops. Phillips informs us that 

 a wine made from these roots approaches nearer to 

 the Malmsey of Madeira and the Canaries than 

 any other wine. It is made with litlle expense or 

 trouble, and onlv requires to be kept a few years to 

 make it as agreeable to the palate, as it is whole- 

 some to the body. A very pure spirit is obtained 

 when parsnips are distilled after a similar prepara- 

 tory process to that used with the carrot. The 

 parsnip resembies the carrot in composition. In 

 the latter, however, the starch, which is found in 

 considerable quantity in the parsnip, is replaced by 

 sugar. This plant, like the carrot, is found wild in 



all parts of Europe, except Lapland and Finmark. 

 The name is derived from Fastns, nourishment, or, 

 according to others, Pastinum, a dibber, or a tool 

 used in digging vineyards, the root resembling that 

 implement in form. 



Hampden G. Glasspoole. 



SPECULATIONS CONCERNING THE USES 

 OF COMETS IN THE UNIVERSE. 



BY JOHN I. PLUMMER, M.A. 



Pakt II. 



rpHERE are several other considerations de- 

 -*- serving our attention, which may be thought 

 to strengthen more or less the hypothesis I have 

 enunciated in the foregoing number regarding the 

 uses of comets, and of which I must say a few 

 words. Our knowledge of chemistry is perhaps 

 not sufiieiently advanced to enable us to declare 

 positively that the substances, which spectroscopic 

 analysis has proved to exist in the nebulse, and of 

 which they are either wholly or in great part com - 

 posed, are not in themselves adequate to form a 

 central sun and system of attendant worlds. It 

 cannot, however, be denied that the nebular hypo- 

 thesis, the brilliant conception of Kant and of 

 Laplace, while it has received on the one hand much 

 confirmation from recent discoveries, has been to an 

 equal, perhaps to a greater, extent rendered less 

 probable by them. It has been iucontestably 

 proved that true nebulae, masses of gaseous matter, 

 actually exist, but we can scarcely conceive that 

 the three simple, non-liqueflable gases, whose united 

 spectra constitute that of the nebula;, can, unless 

 by the help of additions from without, be com- 

 petent to build up a system of the same character 

 as that of *vhich our own planet is a member ; 

 and this becomes still more difficult to admit when 

 we find the elements which such systems would 

 appear to want, existing as wandering bodies of 

 whose use we are otherwise quite ignorant. Yet 

 once allow that the cometary system has a share, 

 and an important share, in the development of new 

 stars and systems, and the hypothesis may stand as 

 securely as before, challenging, us it has always 

 done, our admiration for its beauty, for its sim- 

 plicity, for its comprehensiveness, and for the bold- 

 ness with which it has been originally conceived 

 and subsequently maintained. 



As has been frequently asserted, it requires, how- 

 ever, that nebula; of every degree of condensation 

 should be found in the heavens, a fact sufficiently 

 well attested already by the telescope, but of which 

 the spectroscope has given us litlle, or perhaps 

 even contradictory, evidence. It is true that the 

 faiutuess of these bodies places serious obstacles in 

 the way of such observations, but it has been noted 



