GEEEN VEGETABLES. 51 



same, which the hogs cannot eate by reason of the toughnesse ; whereas 

 the other may be eaten cods and all the rest, same as kidney beanes 

 are, which being so dressed, are exceeding delicate meate." This 

 variety is still in cultivation and known as the " sugar-pea." It is 

 not known when the garden or the field pea was introduced intc 

 England, but Turner figures it (1568), and Gerard adds a figure of the 

 now so-called " Mummy pea." 



Mr. W. B. Booth says : " In Queen Elizabeth's time (about 1570), 

 we are told, they were occasionally brought from Holland and con- 

 sidered a ' dainty dish for ladies.' For many years their culture does 

 not appear to have been much attended to, but after the restoration of 

 Charles II., in 1660, the taste for green peas became fashionable." 



Peas, like other leguminous plants, are highly nitrogenous. Prof. 

 Church gives albuminoids 22.4 per cent., starch 51.3 per cent., and 

 mineral matters 3 per cent. The nutrient ratio is 1 : 2.5; the nutrient 

 value, 79. 



EHUBARB. 



The garden rhubarb is botanically Rheum Rhaponticum , L. It is 

 stated that it grows in Thrace and Scythia; Mr. W. B. Booth (in the 

 ' Treasury of Botany ") adds by the river Volga (the ancient name of 

 which was Rha), and gives 1573 as the earliest date of its cultivation 

 in this country; and that in Queen Elizabeth's time " the leaves were 

 used as a pot-herb and considered superior to spinach or beet ; but it was 

 only at the beginning of the nineteenth century that the stalks were 

 used for tarts," etc. Mr. A. Forsyth suggested the use of the un- 

 opened flowering bud or inflorescence within its bracts, to be cooked as 

 the stalks are. They possess a milder flavour and form a delicate 

 dish.* With regard to the edible leaf-stalks Professor Church ob- 

 serves, " The chief nutrient in rhubarb is the sugar (glucose), which 

 amounts to 2 per 'cent, of the fresh stalks. Its sour taste is due to 

 oxalic acid, or rather to the acid oxalate of potash; oxalate of lime is 

 also present. The following are the principal features: Water 95.1 

 per cent., albuminoids 0.9 per cent., sugar 2.1 per cent., oxalic acid 

 0.3 per cent. He adds : " As 1 Ib. of rhubarb contains less than 1 oz. 

 of solid matter, of which ^ only is nutritive, it is obvious that the 

 food value is very small. " 



SEA-KALE (Crambe maritima, L.). 



This is not at all common, but occurs in the sandy shores of Eng- 

 land and the continent. It was eaten by the ancients, for Pliny thus 

 speaks of it. ' ' There is a kind of cabbage known by the name Halmy- 

 ridia, because growing only on the seashore. It will keep green and 

 fresh during a long sea voyage, put into oil-vessels lately dried. Nitre 

 preserves the greenness 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." This is somewhat suggestive of 

 " sour-kraut, " The first herbalist of the 16th century to distinguish 



* Gardeners' Chrenicle, 1846, p. 5. 



