The Life of the Caterpillar 



have earned the glorious name of 

 quintal, as who should say, a hundredweight 

 of cabbage. They are real monuments of 

 green stuff. 



Later, man thought of obtaining a gene- 

 rous dish with the thousand little sprays of the 

 inflorescence. The cabbage consented. Under 

 the cover of the central leaves, it gorged with 

 food its sheaves of blossom, its flower-stalks, 

 its branches and worked the lot into a fleshy 

 conglomeration. This is the cauliflower, the 

 broccoli. 



Differently entreated, the plant, economi- 

 zing in the centre of its shoot, set a whole 

 family of closs-wrapped cabbages ladder-wise 

 on a tall stem. A multitude of dwarf leaf- 

 buds took the place of the colossal head. This 

 is the Brussels sprout. 



Next comes the turn of the stump, an un- 

 profitable, almost wooden thing, which seemed 

 never to have any other purpose than to act 

 as a support for the plant. But the tricks 

 of gardeners are capable of everything, so 

 much so that the stalk yields to the grower's 

 suggestions and becomes fleshy and swells 

 into an ellipse similar to the turnip, of which 

 it possesses all the merits of corpulence, 

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