TURQUOISE.] NATURAL HISTORY. 319 



groweth by Hackney, and those that are brought to Cheap- 

 side Market from that village are the best that ever I 

 tasted. Turnips flower and seed the second year after they 

 are sown ; for those which flower the same year that they 

 are sown are a degenerate kind, called in Cheshire about 

 the Namptwitch [i.e., Nantwich] Mad Neeps of their evil 

 quality in causing frenzy and giddiness of the brain for a 

 season. The root is many times eaten raw, especially of 

 the poor people in Wales, but most commonly boiled or 

 roasted or baked ; the young and tender shoots or springs 

 of turnips at their first coming forth of the ground boiled 

 d eaten as a salad. Gerard's -Herbal," s.v. 



- 



WITH us the yellow, which comes from Denmark, is 

 preferred ; by others, the red Bohemian. The stalks of the 

 common Turnip, when first beginning to bud, being boiled, 

 eat like asparagus. Evel ^ A cetaria, 79. 



THE best husbandmen would have the seedsmen [of 

 Turnips or rapes] to be naked when he sows them, and in 

 sowing to protest, that this which he doth is for himself 

 and his neighbours. Mark how many days old the moon 

 was when the first snow fell the- winter next before, for 

 if a man do sow rapes or Turnips within the foresaid com- 

 pass of that time, the moon being so many days old, they 

 will come to be wondrous great, and increase exceedingly. 



Holland's Pliny, bk. xviii. ch. xiii. 



f 

 ' 



THE Turnip or navew groweth sometimes to thirty or 

 rty pound weight. The best way of use is accounted, 

 rst to boil them, and, the water being poured out, then to 

 oil them again with fat beef, adding to them some pepper. 



Hart, " Diet of the Diseased," bk. i. ch. xiii. 





Turquoise. 



MERCHANT OF VENICE, iii. I, 126. 



TURQUOISE is a white yellow stone, and hath that name 

 of the country of Turkey, there it is bred. This stone 

 keepeth and saveth the sight, and breedeth gladness and 

 omfort. 



Bartholomew (Bert he lei), bk. xvi. 97, 



