248 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



more profitable in their culture. Its peculiar sweet- 

 ness, so delightful to the palates of our less refined 

 fore-fathers, to us appears nauseous lusciousness ; and 

 that root which the Emperor Tiberius esteemed so 

 much as to cause it to be brought from the banks 

 of the Rhine for the use of his table, is little relished 

 in the present day. Beckmann ingeniously accounts 

 for this change of taste in the use of vegetable pro- 

 ductions. ' In the oldest times mankind were so 

 fond of sweet things, that the goodness and agreeable 

 taste of every kind of food was determined according 

 to the degree of its sweetness; and such is the manner 

 of judging, even at present, throughout all the East, in- 

 Africa, and in America. This is the case also among 

 us with the greater part of the lower classes, who are 

 not able to follow the mode of richer tables. In the 

 northern countries this taste is almost every where 

 prevalent. Thus the Swedes spoil, by the addition of 

 sugar, costly Rhenish wines, sauer-kraut, and other 

 articles, the agreeable tartness of which is gratifying to 

 other nations. In proportion to their population and 

 luxury, the Swedes seem to use more sugar than the 

 Germans, and the Germans more than the English or 

 French ; and one might almost suspect that a taste 

 for sweet things was in the inverse ratio of culture. 

 At any rate, one can thus explain why many vegetable 

 productions which some centuries ago were reckoned 

 among the most agreeable dishes appear to us to be 

 nauseously sweet.'* 



For some time after the cultivation of skirrets had 

 become neglected in the gardens of the rich, they still 

 continued to be an object of culture among the poor 

 in a few remote parts of the country. But even in 

 those situations they have now very generally given 

 way to the potato, and are seldom grown, and even 

 then rather from the love of variety than for any 



* History of Inventions, vol. iv, p. 358. 



