2a8 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



valuable plants, and others, such as the hemlock, of the 

 most poisonous nature. 



The name seems to be with equal propriety given 

 as parsnip, or parsnep, in the various text-books, any six 

 that favour the one spelling being balanced by half a 

 dozen that prefer the other, and in the older authors 

 we may find pasnep and divers other variations. These, 

 however, were the days before Civil Service Examinations, 

 when a man was free to spell as he liked, no man daring 

 to make him afraid. The plant was cultivated by the 

 Romans, and it is recorded in the society gossip of his 

 day that the Emperor Tiberius was specially partial to 

 a dish of parsnips. To the Romans the plant was the 

 Pastinaca, a name that we find in Pliny and other writers, 

 and which has gradually, as it has come down the ages, 

 been corrupted into parsnip. When our gardener would 

 set out young plants, such as lettuce or cabbage, he 

 makes a series of holes with a tool called a dibble to insert 

 their roots in, and when the gardener in old Roman days 

 had a similar task, he used a precisely similar tool, only 

 instead of calling it a dibble he called it pastinum, and 

 in its size and shape it was so very like a parsnip root 

 that the parsnip was called Pastinaca. The parsnip has 

 for centuries been cultivated as a welcome food both 

 for man and beast, but it has no great nutritive powers.^ 

 It contains a considerable amount of sugar, but in this 

 respect the beetroot surpasses it, so that no great commercial 

 use has been made of it. 



' Gerard declares that " The parsneps nourish more than doe the 

 Turneps or the Carrots, and the nourishment is somewhat thicker, but not 

 faultie nor bad." Those, therefore, who like to take their nourishment 

 thick will still pin their faith on parsnips. 



