HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



i55 



We have no precise date when the cucumber was 

 first cultivated in England. It may have been intro- 

 duced with other fruits and vegetables at the time 

 the Romans were masters of this country. According 

 to a note in Gough's "British Topography," vol. i. 

 p. 134, it was, with the melon, commonly cultivated 

 in the reign of Edward III. (1327), but in consequence 

 of the wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster 

 the cultivation of them, like other plants, became 

 neglected, and at last entirely lost. It was introduced 

 again at the later part of the reign of Henry VIII. 



Our old friend Gerard mentions them thus in his 

 Herbal (1596) : "There be divers sorts of cucum- 

 bers, some great, others lesser, some of the garden, 

 some wild, some of one fashion and some of another. 

 There be also certain long cucumbers which were 

 first made (as it is said) by art and manuring, which 

 nature afterwards did preserve, for at first when the 

 fruit was very little it is put into some hollow cane, 

 or other thing made for the purpose, in which the 

 cucumber groweth very long by reason of that narrow 

 hollowness, which, being filled up, the cucumber in- 

 creaseth in length. The seed of this kind being sown 

 bringeth forth not such as were before, but such as 

 art has framed which of their own growth are found 

 long and ofttimes very crookedly turned, and therefore 

 they have been called Anguine, or long cucumber." 

 Gerard extols the cucumber "mixed with oatmeal 

 pottage and eaten at every meal for three weeks as 

 a perfect cure for persons afflicted with flegme and 

 copper faces, red and shining fierie noses (as red 

 as roses) with pimples, pumples rubuse and such- 

 like precious faces ; but at the same time they are to 

 be sure to wash their faces with a decoction of vinegar, 

 orris root, camphor," etc. This old author also gives 

 the earliest direction in this country for making hot- 

 beds for cucumbers. He directs that they should 

 be covered with mats over hoops, as glasses were 

 not known at that time. 



Lord Francis Bacon, who wrote about 1598, says 

 cucumbers "will prove more tender and dainty if 

 their seeds be steeped in milk. The cause may be 

 for that the seeds being mollified in milk, will be too 

 weak to draw the grosser juices of the earth, but only 

 the finer." He adds, "cucumbers will be less 

 watery if the pit where you set them be filled half 

 way with chaff or small sticks, and then pour earth 

 upon them ; for cucumbers, as it seemeth, do 

 exceedingly affect moisture, and over-drinketh them- 

 selves, which this chaff or chips forbiddeth." He 

 also states that in his day " it was the practice to cut 

 off the stalks of cucumbers immediately after bearing, 

 close by the earth, and then to cast a pretty quantity 

 of earth upon the plant that remaineth, and they 

 would bear fruit the next year, long before the 

 ordinary time. The cause may be for that the sap 

 goeth down sooner, and is not spent in the stalk or 

 leaf, which remaineth after the fruit ; where note, 

 that the dying in winter of the roots of plants that are 



annual, seemeth to be partly caused by the over- 

 expense of the sap into stalks and leaves, which being 

 prevented, they will superannuate, if they stand warm." 

 Parkinson, in his " Paradisus," 1656, tells us that 

 in many countries they do eat cucumbers as we do 

 apples and pears, paring and giving slices of them as 

 we would to our friends of some dainty apple or pear. 

 The cucumber was not generally cultivated till almost 

 the middle of the seventeenth century, and it is stated 

 that the first successful forcer of this plant in England 

 was Thomas Fowler, gardener to Sir Nicholas 

 Gould, of Stoke Newington, who presented a brace 

 of well-grown fruit to King George I. on New Year's 

 Day, 1 72 1 ; the seeds from which they were raised 

 were sown on the 25th of September. Some years 

 ago the cucumber was cultivated in large quantities in 

 the outskirts of London, and it is stated in Dr. 

 Wynter's "Curiosities of Civilisation," page 229, that 

 fourteen acres might be seen under hand-glasses in a 

 single domain, and that it has been known that 

 200,000 gherkins have been cut in a morning for the 

 pickle merchants. It is also stated that cucumbers 

 have refused to grow well around London ever since 

 the outbreak of the potato disease. In Loudon's 

 time large quantities were grown in the fields of 

 Hertfordshire without the aid of glass for the London 

 markets during the summer months. The village of 

 Sandy in Bedfordshire has been known to furnish 

 10,000 bushels of gherkins in one week for pickling 

 purposes. The cucumber, notwithstanding its 

 extensive use among all classes in this country, is 

 considered unwholesome by most medical practi- 

 tioners. Dr. Doran, in his " Table Traits," mentions 

 that in the days of Evelyn (1699) tne cucumber was 

 looked upon as only one remove from poison, and 

 adds that it had better be eaten and enjoyed with that 

 opinion in memory. Abernethy also gave a quaint 

 recipe for its use, which was to peel the cucumber, 

 slice it, pepper it, put vinegar to it, then throw it out 

 of the window. The extent to which the cucumber 

 is consumed by the inhabitants of Egypt and the 

 South-west of Asia, but also in European Russia 

 and Germany would scarcely seem credible in this 

 country. A correspondent of the "Daily News," in 

 the summer of 1874, returning from the fair of Nijni- 

 Novgorod, was struck with the (profusion of water 

 melons and cucumbers everywhere offered for sale. 

 Pyramids of melon and water-melons, like cannon- 

 balls in an arsenal, were heaped up in every direction, 

 and as for cucumbers, you could not help fancying 

 that a plague of them, like locusts, had descended 

 upon the earth. You never see a Russian peasant at 

 dinner but you see the lump of black bread and a 

 cucumber. The cucumber seems certainly a singular 

 dish to be so national in a country with a climate 

 like Russia. It is the last that one would have 

 selected a priori for the post ; but this is only one of 

 the great many singularities one meets with. The 

 cucumber costs about the thirtieth part of a penny about 



