Chap. 41.] CABBAGES ; SEVEEAL VARIETIES OF THEM. 187 



where there was formerly a lake, now no longer in existence, 

 and a tower which is still standing. The head of this cabbage 

 is very large, and the leaves are almost without number, some 

 of them being round and smooth, and others long and sinewy ; 

 indeed, there is no cabbage that runs to a larger head than this, 

 with the sole exception of the Tritian variety, which has a 

 head sometimes as much as a foot in thickness, and throws out 

 its cyma3 the latest of all. 



In all kinds of cabbages, hoar-frost contributes very mate- 

 rially to their sweetness ; but it is apt to be productive of con- 

 siderable injury, if care is not taken to protect the pith by 

 cutting them aslant. Those plants which are intended for 

 seed are never cut. 



There is another kind, again, that is held in peculiar esteem, 

 and which never exceeds the height of an herbaceous plant ; 

 it is known by the name of " halmyridia," 40 from the circum- 

 stance of its growing on the sea-shore 41 only. It will keep green 

 and fresh during a long voyage even, if care is taken not to let 

 it touch the ground from the moment that it is cut, but to put 

 it into oil-vessels lately dried, and then to bung them so as 

 to eifectually exclude all air. There are some 42 who are of 

 opinion, that the plant will come to maturity all the sooner 

 if some sea-weed is laid at the root when it is transplanted, 

 or else as much pounded nitre as can be taken up with three 

 fingers ; and others, again, sprinkle the leaves with trefoil seed 

 and nitre pounded together. 43 Nitre, too, preserves the green- 

 ness of cabbage when cooked, a result which is equally ensured 

 by the Apician mode of boiling, or in other words, by steeping 

 the plants in oil and salt before they are cooked. 



There is a method of grafting vegetables by cutting the 

 shoots and the stalk, and then inserting in the pith the seed 



40 Generally thought to be the Crambe maritima of botanists, sea-cab- 

 bage, or sea-kale. Some, however, take it to be the Convolvulus solda- 

 nella of Linnaeus. See B. xx. c. 38. 



41 From a\g, the " sea." 



42 He alludes to the statement made by Columella, probably, De Re 

 Rust. B. xi. c. 3. 



43 Fee remarks, that probably we here find the first germs of the prac- 

 tice which resulted in the making ofsour-krout (sauer-kraut). Dalechamps 

 censures Pliny for the mention of trefoil here, the passage which he has 

 translated speaking not of that plant, but of the trefoil or three-leaved 

 cabbage., 



