PREFACE 



THE objects of this book are, first, the scientific one of showing how 

 plants have varied under cultivation. Thus, the forms of the members 

 of the Cabbage group have all been acquired from the Wild Cabbage 

 (Brassica oleracea, L.) of our chalk cliffs. These grow to some three 

 feet in height when in flower, and take a form like the cultivated Kales 

 or, rather, one should say that the latter are the least altered from 

 the original stock; while Brussels Sprouts and the huge Cauliflowers 

 are very different from the wild type. These many forms are now 

 hereditary, for it is the experience of all cultivators and experimenters 

 that the change of soil, Ac., from the wild state to that of a garden 

 acts directly upon the seedlings, so that they respond to the new 

 influences of the prepared and improved environmental conditions by 

 growing in adaptation to them ; and that if a plant thus altered be grown 

 for several generations under the same conditions, the new variation 

 tends to become fixed, arid as a rule does actually become so when, 

 subsequently, it is more or less independent of the conditions under 

 which it originated, and is " true to seed." 



The second object is to trace the history of garden plants from 

 antiquity downwards from, say, Theophrastus, of the fourth 

 century B.C., whose writings are embodied in those of Pliny and 

 Dioscorides of the first century A.D. then to continue the 

 investigation through the Middle Ages to the sixteenth century, in 

 which many " Herbals " were written. 



Our existing plants will be compared with those described and 

 figured by the authors of that date. 



The " Herbals " were, strictly speaking, medical books, for all 

 plants were supposed to have their special healing virtues. But in the 

 " Herbals " of that century we find culinary uses of many plants 

 superadded to their medicinal values, and it is pretty obvious that they 

 passed from one to the other by the ' ' drug ' ' becoming an ' ' edible ' ' 

 plant by usage. Thus some are described as medicines, but also as 

 ''salads," showing how the change was made. E.g., the Green 

 Celery was a drug with many virtues in the fourteenth century ; but by 

 blanching it became an edible plant, as well as by stewing the leaves 

 as is still done in Malta, where it is never blanched. All the so-called 

 kitchen herbs" used for flavouring were originally medicinal plants, 

 and have undergone little or no change. 



In the later centuries the innumerable drugs became reduced in 

 number, and their supposed curative properties fell more or less into 



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