UNCLE IN ENGLAND. 239 



I intend to keep my branches in water as long 

 as possible, that I may see what happens at last. 

 On the living trees out of doors no leaf-bud has 

 yet attempted to unfold its scales. 



9A. As we walked in the sheltered kitchen- 

 garden this stormy day, Miss Perceval remarked 

 what an alteration soil, climate, and culture can 

 produce in the external characters of plants ; 

 and for remarkable instances of this, she 

 says, we need not go farther than the kitchen- 

 garden. 



" There," she said, " we find cabbage, cauli- 

 flower, kale, brocoli, and turnip-rooted cabbage ; 

 but who could ever imagine that all these were 

 from the same original species ? Nothing, how- 

 ever, is more certain than that they are all 

 varieties produced by the cultivation of a plant 

 which grows wild on the sea-shores of Europe, 

 and which, in its external appearance, is as 

 different from any of those, as they are from each 

 other. These alterations become so strongly 

 fixed by habit, that they continue in the plants 

 that spring from the seeds of each variety ; they 

 are liable, however, again to degenerate into each 

 other ; and it is only by the art of gardening 

 that they are preserved distinct, or that fresh 

 varieties are produced." 



Miss Perceval made me examine the several 



