CHAPTER XIV 



THE CABBAGE-CATERPILLAR 



THE cabbage of our modern kitchen-gardens is a semi- 

 artificial plant, the produce of our agricultural ingenuity 

 quite as much as of the niggardly gifts of nature. Spon- 

 taneous vegetation supplied us with the long-stalked, 

 scanty-leaved, ill-smelling wilding, as found, according 

 to the botanist, on the ocean cliffs. He had need of a 

 rare inspiration who first showed faith in this rustic 

 clown and proposed to improve it in his garden-patch. 



Progressing by infinitesimal degrees, culture wrought 

 miracles. It began by persuading the wild cabbage to 

 discard its wretched leaves, beaten by the sea-winds, and 

 to replace them by others, ample and fleshy and close- 

 fitting. The gentle cabbage submitted without protest. 

 It deprived itself of the joys of light by arranging its 

 leaves in a large compact head, white and tender. In 

 our day, among the successors of those first tiny hearts, 

 are some that, by virtue of their massive bulk, have 

 earned the glorious name of chou quintal, as who should 

 say a hundredweight of cabbage. They are real monu- 

 ments of green stuff. 



Later, man thought of obtaining a generous dish with 

 a thousand little sprays of the inflorescence. The cab- 

 bage consented. Under the cover of the central leaves, 

 it gorged with food its sheaves of blossom, its flower- 

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