Chit-chat, 501 



Von Os, When Mercury was culminating, or Mars and 

 Venus had got into the ninth house. 



Dot\ 'Tis curious to reflect, that at the vast baronial feasts, 

 in the days of the Plantagenets and Tudors, where we read 

 of such onslaught of beeves, muttons, hogs, fowl and fish, the 

 courtly knights and beauteous dames had no other vegetable 

 save bread — not even a potato ! 



Vo?l Os. " They carved at the meal with their gloves of steel. 

 And drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd." 



Dov. And when the cloth was drawn — 



VonOs. Cloth!-— 



JDov, They had scarce an apple to give zest to their wine. 



Von Os. We read of roasted crabs ; and mayhap they had 

 baked acorns and pignuts. 



Dov. Ha ! ha ! ha ! — Caliban's dainties. Now we have 

 wholesome vegetables almost for nothing, and pine-apples for 

 a trifle. Thanks to Mr. Knight — push the bottle — here's 

 to his health in a bumper. 



Vo?i Os. Who, walking on Chester walls in those days, and 

 seeing the jBrassica oleracea, where it grows in abundance, 

 would have supposed that from it would spring cabbages as 

 big as drums, and cauliflowers as florid as a bishop's wig ? 



JJov. Or cautiously chaumhering an acrid sloe, imagine it to 

 be the parent of a green gage ? 



Von Os. This is the Education of Vegetables. 



Dov. The March of Increment ! 



Von Os. See, see, on the cool dark walk beneath these trees, 

 a silvery fly, wheeling in slow luminous curves, like streaks of 

 fire ! Now he alights — see, there are several of them ! What 

 do you call him ? 



Dov. He is now called Porphyrops splendidus. 



Von Os. And his face is purple, or rather of a maroon 

 colour. 'Tis pity but what we had English names for every 

 thing, were it but for the sake of the uneducated. 



Dov, Education is not a recollection of words. 



Von Os. Do not you think many are deterred from botany 

 by the Greek and Latin terms ? 



Dov. A few feeble minds may : but every man, woman, and 

 child hourly uses words emerging from languages far more 

 abstruse and obscure than the classical. A common gardener, 

 with a little practice, from a bare catalogue, will shortly 

 remember the botanic terms and names as well as if they 

 were English, with the exception of scratching Priscian a 

 little : the quantity is now usually marked. A greater stum- 

 bling-block is that of scientific arrangers, so often, and so 

 capriciously, changing the names. 



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