ON OUR NATIVE FOOD-PRODUCING PLANTS. 



BY THOS. BLASHILL, ESQ., VICE-PKESIDENT. 



Let a man be called antiquary, epicure, or philanthropist, busying 

 himself with the past, the present, or the future ; or let him as a natui-alist 

 belong to all time — the study of our Native Plants brings food for that 

 particular organ, noble or common-place, ■which makes him what he is. It shows 

 the sources from whence our remote ancestors drew the vegetable portion of 

 their daily fare, perhaps their whole sustenance in times of scarcity, and it 

 accounts for habits and prejutUces which survive through centuries of civiliza- 

 tion. It shows moreover what plants are undoubtedly fitted for our soil and 

 climate, and may be most easily improved by cultivation, and it enables us to 

 distinguish those which are wholesome, toothsome, or nutritious, from such as 

 are poisonous, distasteful, or simply indifferent. Practically it ought to teach 

 us how to add to the food of our people, and also how to introduce variety 

 into household cookery, a point less regarded in England than in any other 

 country of Europe. 



From the accounts of medioeval manners we can form but a mean opinion 

 of the vegetables supplied to the best tables down to the time of the later 

 I'udors. Whether gathered from the garden or the field they were not, as 

 a rule, far advanced beyond the wild state except in such plants as Coleworts, 

 Cabbages, oi Greens, which are easily improved by cultivation in rich soil. Many 

 kinds were often mixed in the same dish with the view of diluting the pungent 

 flavour of some by the addition of such as were mild or tasteless, and a "grenG 

 sauce" composed chiefly of Sorrel leaves pounded in vinegar and verjuice was 

 eaten with fish, flesh, and fowl. Whatever may have been the available supply 

 of vegetable food it seems to have been possible to keep body and soul together 

 upon it alone, for the most stiict of the monks of old were teetotal abstainers 

 from fish as well as flesh — they only touched them on a doctor's certificate. 

 On the other hand John Russell, usher and marshall in hall to good Duke 

 Humphrey, who cannot have been so bad a host as some have thought, says in 

 his "Boke of Kurture," "beware of saladis, grene metis, and frutes rawe ; for 

 they make many a man have a feble ma we." And this advice which he offered 

 to the young gentlemen of the 15th century seems to have become part of the 

 wisdom of futuie generations, for as the Potato came into general use several 

 of the native vegetables, with some excellent ones of foreign origin, dropped 

 out of the bill of fare and are now only to be found at the tables of those who are 

 curious in matters of horticulture. So late as the end of the 17th centiuy, the 



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