SUCCULENT ROOTS. 



peat ground, turnips have been found to increase by 

 growth 15,990 times the weight of their seeds each 

 day they stood upon it. It is not, however, only the 

 size and weight of the root which renders this crop so 

 productive ; the number contained in a given space, 

 with reference to their size, is very great. Some 

 writers speak rather marvellously on this subject, but 

 it is generally thought a good crop to obtain a turnip 

 from each square foot of ground. Mill considers an 

 average crop to be 11 ,664 roots per acre, which at 

 six pounds each will be 69,984 pounds. 



The uses of the turnip as a culinary vegetable are 

 too familiarly known to require that they should be 

 here enumerated. Though in very extensive favour 

 among the moderns, the different modes of preparing 

 it appear poor and insipid compared with those efforts 

 of gastronomic skill by which the ancients made it 

 assume so many inviting forms. It is related that 

 ( the king of Bithynia, in some expedition against 

 the Scythians, in the winter, and at a great distance 

 from the sea, had a violent longing for a small fish 

 called aphy a pilchard, a herring, or an anchovy. 

 His cook cut a turnip to the perfect imitation of 

 its shape ; then, fried in oil, salted, and well powdered 

 with the grains of a dozen black poppies, his ma- 

 jesty's taste was so exquisitely deceived, that he 

 praised the root to his guest as an excellent fish. 

 This transmutation of vegetables into meat or fish is 

 a province of the culinary art which we appear to have 

 lost ; yet these are cibi innocenles (harmless food) 

 compared with the things themselves. ' * - 



Our more immediate ancestors appear to have 

 applied the turnip to more extensive uses as an esculent 

 than is done in the present day. It is recorded,! that 

 in the years 1629 and 1630, when there was a dearth 



* Curiosities of Literature., TO!, v, p. 88. 

 t Phil. Trans. Noa. 90, and 205. 



