56 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



credible for if there is one thing that its votary demands just 

 right without foreign admixtures, it is coffee. He may use 

 it according to fancy, with or without cream or sugar, but he 

 peremptorily calls for coffee, not chickory, beans, barley or 

 prepared saw-dust. 



It will be a surprise to many to learn that chickory is quite 

 largely cultivated in this country from Massachusetts to Cali- 

 fornia and Oregon. For what purpose it is grown we do not 

 learn, but a field of it, unmixed with weeds must be a delight 

 to any lover of form and color. 



Brown University, Providence, R. I. 



THE! STORY OF THE VEGETABLES. 



A GE, which tinges with romance many of the commonest 

 ^~*' things of life, invests even the vegetables of our kitch- 

 ens with a certain dignity when we know something of their 

 origin and history. I confess, when I think of the centuries 

 during which some of these have contributed to the energy of 

 the race, I feel that "a dinner of herbs" becomes indeed a 

 symposium with the spirits of the time. Dainty romancers 

 would feed their heroes on nectar and ambrosia, but as a 

 matter of fact it is such plebeian fare as peas and beans, onions 

 and cucumbers and buttered parsnips that enabled Alexander 

 to conquer his world, and that have fed poets from Homer to 

 Kipling. 



If the esteem of man is to count for aught, no vegetable 

 can boast of a more honorable history than the onion, which 

 has probably been more widely grown for the table than any 

 other plant that we know ; for these sleek, rotund bulbs are the 

 result of millenniums of persistent culture. Its native land 

 is shrouded in mystery. Perhaps it was Syria or India ; but 

 certainly it found its way to Egypt at an early day, for it is 

 represented on monuments which show it to have been culti- 



