612 BRASSICACEOUS ESCULENTS, OR THE CABBAGE TRIBE. 



with the borecoles when it is wished to have the leaves blanched. 

 The best varieties of cabbages, however, close in, and blanch them- 

 selves. Cauliflowers, in summer, can be made more white and 

 delicate by tying the leaves over the flowers, and, as already described, 

 the same practice may often preserve broccoli from winter or spring 

 frost. Most of the varieties, but more especially the broccolis, are 

 subject to the club in the root ; an unnatural protuberance produced 

 by the puncture of an insect, and the subsequent hatching of deposited 

 eggs, and apparently producing a diseased habit, so that club roots 

 are produced afterwards in the same plant without the intervention of 

 an insect. When the club has once appeared on the roots of a plant, 

 there is no remedy for it ; but in soils and situations subject to this 

 disease, the insect may be deterred from laying its eggs in the root by 

 putting a little quicklime in the hole made by the dibber before 

 inserting the plant. Incorporating burnt clay with the soil has also 

 been found to check clubbing, as well as to annoy worms and slugs ; 

 but the quantity necessary for these purposes, unless it was also 

 required for the improvement of the soil, amounts almost to a 

 prohibition of its use. As the leaves, more especially of the common 

 cabbage in very dry weather, are subject to be covered by aphides, 

 and to be eaten by the larvae or caterpillars of butterflies (Pontia 

 sp.), as soon as the former or the eggs of the latter are observed, 

 the plants should be liberally watered with clear lime-water and the 

 operation repeated till every egg and caterpillar is destroyed. Even 

 copious supplies of clear water, poured on the plants for several 

 evenings in succession, will effectually destroy the caterpillar in every 

 stage of its growth ; and in no variety of the cabbage tribe, excepting 

 the cauliflower when it is nearly mature, will water in the slightest 

 degree injure the flavour. Where lime-water or water alone cannot 

 be supplied in sufficient quantities, the eggs of the butterflies ought to 

 be collected and destroyed ; and indeed this may be done in connexion 

 with watering. The eggs are deposited in small patches on the upper 

 side of the leaf; and in very warm weather they will hatch in twenty 

 or thirty hours, and soon spread over the whole surface of the leaf. 

 Slugs and earth-worms may be effectually destroyed by lime-water; 

 or as a convenient substitute, where quicklime is not at hand, potash 

 and water, or a decoction of foxglove, henbane, white hellebore, or 

 walnut lea\es. In general, the routine culture of the cabbage tribe 

 consists in destroying weeds as soon as they appear, stirring the soil 

 as deep as the roots will admit with a fork, or a pronged hoe, and 

 supplying water or liquid manure when the condition of the plants, or 

 the soil, or the state of the weather, requires it. Where the stems are 

 left to produce sprouts, deeply stirring the soil and manuring are of 

 essential service. In gathering the crop, when sprouts are not wanted, 

 the plants, after the head is cut off, should be pulled up by the roots 

 and carried to the manure-heap ; or, if the stems are to be left, they 

 should be stripped of their leaves, and the whole of these removed to 

 the dung-heap and mixed with other materials ; for nothing among 

 vegetables is more offensive than the decaying leaves of the cabbage 



