266 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



in sufficient abundance to appear in our English 

 markets until that period. The importation then of 

 Dutch gardeners and Dutch gardening gave an im- 

 pulse to English horticulture, which had been in rather 

 a languishing state during the intestine troubles to 

 which the revolution of 1688 put a termination. But 

 although the Dutch gardening no doubt produced an 

 improvement in the cultivation of the cauliflower, as 

 well as in vegetables generally, this plant became more 

 naturalized in England than in Holland, or any of the 

 adjacent countries of the Continent. Up to the period 

 of the French revolution, cauliflowers were regularly 

 exported from England into Holland, some parts of 

 Germany, and even France ; and while the seed of 

 very many cultivated plants is in this country pre- 

 ferred, when it is of Dutch rather than of English pro- 

 duce, cauliflower seed obtained from England is the 

 most esteemed in Holland, and indeed throughout the 

 Continent. The superiority of the English cauli- 

 flower is to be attributed solely to culture, and to cul- 

 ture carried on in the vicinity of London, not by ex- 

 perimentalists or amateurs, but by those who rear 

 the plants for sale in the way of ordinary business. 

 This vegetable is now cultivated very generally 

 throughout the island ; but since the portion of the 

 plant which is used as food is not nearly as large as 

 that of the cabbage, occupying an equal space while 

 it requires a richer soil and a warmer situation, it 

 evidently can never become so cheap an esculent. Its 

 delicate flavour is, however, in general much preferred 

 to that of the cabbage, and it takes a higher rank 

 in the list of culinary vegetables. Dr Johnson, 

 whose most trivial and perhaps sometimes absurd 

 remarks have been considered worthy of record, used 

 to say ' Of all flowers I like the cauliflower the best. ' 

 This plant, like the common cabbage, is first raised 

 in a seed-bed of light earth, and finally transplanted 



