236 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



in England, very good, white, lasting, and wholesome 

 bread was made of boiled turnips, deprived of their 

 moisture by pressure, and then kneaded with an equal 

 quantity of wheaten flour, the whole forming what was 

 called turnip-bread. The scarcity of corn in 1693 

 obliged the poor people of Essex again to have re- 

 course to this species of food. This bread could not, 

 it is said, be distinguished by the eye from a wheaten 

 loaf ; neither did the smell much betray it , especially 

 when cold. 



The earliest spring-produced leaves of the turnip are 

 sometimes boiled or stewed, and appear on the table 

 under the name of turnip-tops. The Romans like- 

 wise applied these tender leaves to the same purpose. 



Turnips, in all their varieties, do not contain so 

 much nourishment as either carrots or parsnips. Sir 

 Humphrey Davy's analysis gives only forty-two parts 

 of nutritive matter in one thousand parts of the com- 

 mon turnip, and sixty-four parts in one thousand parts 

 of the Swedish root ; but as the turnips cultivated in 

 the environs of London are not considered of so good 

 a quality as those farther north, it is probable that this 

 estimate may be somewhat below the average pro- 

 portion. 



The CARROT Daucus carola. It was a subject 

 of much interest among the botanists of the sixteenth 

 and seventeenth centuries to ascertain what plants of 

 the ancients could be identified with those at present 

 known. Accordingly we find in the works of those 

 writers many curious and learned disquisitions in sup- 

 port of their respective opinions. Among the plants 

 which have given rise to so much laborious, and per- 

 haps unprofitable research, the carrot makes a pro- 

 minent figure. This discussion would have little 

 interest in the present day ; the result, however, shows 

 that the carrot was certainly known and used by the 

 ancients as an edible root. A plant under the name 



