I02 



HARD WICKE 'S S CIENCE - G O SSI P. 



white ; legs and cla\\'s l^rownish black. The female 

 is not so deep coloured ; also the band of white 

 across the chest is not so broad and pure as in the 

 male. — Charles Dixon. 



THE HISTORY OF OUR SALAD HERBS. 



THE use of salads is of the greatest antiquity, for 

 we find mention of the Lettuce, Endive, Ra- 

 dishes, &c., in most of the books of ancient authors 

 who wrote upon plants. In the "Mishna," a 

 Hebrew book containing the traditions and explana- 

 tions of Sci-ipture, we find that the bitter herbs 

 commanded to be eaten at the Paschal feast of the 

 Jews, was a salad consisting of wild lettuce, endive, 

 the young green tops of horseradish, a species of 

 nettle and coriander, all of which, in their uncultivated 

 and unbleached state, are of an intense bitter. 



The ancient Epicureans of Athens and Rome took 

 great pains to have their salad herbs of the first-rate 

 quality ; even poets sang their praises. 



Ovidj in his tale of " Philemon and Bauris," says : 



A garden salad was the third supply 

 Of endive, radishes, and succory. 



In England there is no doubt at a very early period 

 the old monks and the ecclesiastical orders had the 

 gardens of their monasteries, which were scattered 

 over the kingdom, well stocked M'ith salad herbs and 

 other simples, both for the table and medicinal use. 

 Oil for salads is mentioned in one of the Paston letters 

 written in 1466 (" Paston's Lett.," i. p. 228). 



Our ancestors used a great many more herbs and 

 roots, which are never put in the salad-bowl at the 

 present day. Gerard's list of garden growths, and 

 simples good for salads, comprised more than thirty. 

 John Evelyn, in "Acetaria, a Discourse on Sallets," 

 published in 1699, enumerates over seventy. He 

 praises the milky or dappled thistle, either as a salad 

 or baked in jjies ; it was at that period sold in our 

 herb-markets for a supposed virtue, in consequence of 

 its name, Cardiius' JMar'uc (Our Lady's Milk-thistle), 

 which caused it to be esteemed a proper diet for 

 nurses ; but of all his dainties which we, in the present 

 age, would be the least willing to partake, are the 

 small young acorns which we find in the stock-doves' 

 craws, and which he declares are delicious fare, as 

 well as those incomparable salads of young herbs 

 taken out of the maws of partridges at a certain season 

 of the year, which give them a preparation far ex- 

 ceeding the art of cookery. They were certainly 

 valiant eaters in those days, and one who admired 

 such salads might have sat down with a relish to a 

 Northern Indian's feast. Nettles and twigs of rose- 

 mary, with pickled gherkins, we are told, were also a 

 favourite salad with our forefathers. 



Although many herbs miglit be, and are, used on 

 the Continent as material for salad, I must confine 



myself in these articles to those which are in common 

 use among us. The first of these is the genus contain- 

 ing the Lettuce, Endive, and Succory, all belonging 

 to the order Composite. 



The Lettuce [Lactuca sativa) is mentioned by 

 Hippocrates and Dioscorides, both as an aliment and 

 medicine. We also learn from an anecdote related 

 by Herodotus, that lettuces were served in their 

 natural state at the royal tables of the Persian kings 

 at least 550 years before the Christian era. Cambyses, 

 son of Cyrus the Great, had his brother Smerdis killed 

 from mere suspicion, and, contrary to the laws, married 

 his sister : this princess being at the table with Cam- 

 byses, she stripped a lettuce of part of its^ leaves, when 

 the king observing that the plant was not so beautiful 

 as when it had all its leaves, "It is the same with 

 our family," replied the princess, "since you have 

 cut off a precious shoot." This indiscreet allusion 

 cost her her life. 



Pliny tells us that the Greeks cultivated a variety 

 of lettuce which grew to a great height, and that 

 they bestowed, like his own countrymen, great care 

 in the cultivation of them. It is stated that Aristoxenes, 

 a philosopher by profession and epicure by taste, grew 

 a variety of these plants iir his garden that were the 

 envy of his neighbours. He used to sprinkle them 

 at night with a sweet-smelling wine, and when asked 

 the means he employed to get lettuce of such delicate 

 perfume and exquisite taste, replied that the earth 

 prepared them expressly for him (Athen., i. 12). 



Theophrastus in his " History of Plants," men- 

 tions that the Lettuce was a favourite plant of the 

 beautiful Adonis ; and that on his death Venus threw 

 herself upon a bed of lettuces to lull her grief and 

 repress her desires ; thus showing that the narcotic 

 and sedative virtues of this plant were well known 

 to the ancients. The celebrated physician Galen, 

 who lived A.D. 150, mentions that in his old age he 

 found no remedy against wakefulness with which he 

 was troubled so effectual as eating lettuces of an 

 evening. I\Iany persons, he says, boil this tender 

 herb in water, before it produces stalks, "as I myself 

 now do since my teeth begin to fail me." Suetonius, 

 the biographer of Augustus Ccesar, informs us that this 

 emperor was cured of a dangerous disease by the use 

 of lettuces, recommended by Antonius Musa, his 

 first physician. After that the Romans began to 

 devise means of growing them at all seasons of the 

 year, and even preserving them, for they were used 

 in pottage as well as in salads. They were anciently 

 eaten at the conclusion of supper ; but in the time of 

 Domitian they changed this order, and served them 

 with the first entries at their feasts. We do not know 

 exactly at what period the Lettuce was introduced 

 into England, but Turner, 153S, mentions it as not 

 being a rare or recently-cultivated plant, but being 

 one with which the public had long been familiar. 

 In the Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VUL, in 

 1530, we find that the gardener at York-place received 



