ACETARIOUS PLANTS. 301 



Under so variable an atmosphere as that of Britain, 

 a crop of this kind must be precarious, unless in those 

 places where there is generally a week or two of 

 settled drought, about the warmest period of the 

 year, and where the cultivator has sufficient local 

 knowledge for enabling him to time the state of his 

 plants accordingly. Mr Henderson, the Brechin cul- 

 tivator, an intelligent and experienced horticulturist, 

 states, that in favourable years the lettuce-opium, 

 notwithstanding the trouble of collecting it, is much 

 more profitable than any other crop that comes to 

 maturity, in so short a time, upon the same breadth 

 of land. 



Turner mentions the lettuce as being, in 1652, not 

 a rare or recently cultivated plant, but one with which 

 the public generally had been long familiar. In the 

 Privy-Purse expenses of Henry VIII, in 1530, we 

 find that the gardener at York-Place . jceived a re- 

 ward for bringing ' lettuze' and cherries to Hampton 

 Court. Although it cannot now be definitely ascer- 

 tained when or how this plant was first introduced 

 into England, we are no doubt indebted for some of 

 its varieties to the Greek islands. The Cos lettuce, 

 as its name indicates, is a native of the island of 

 Cos, and was most probably brought thence into this 

 country. 



The culture of this plant is so simple, and it 

 requires so little space, that a garden of the most 

 humble dimensions is seldom found without having 

 a small nook appropriated to this cooling and agree- 

 able vegetable. There are many varieties of the let- 

 tuce, very nearly twenty being enumerated as objects 

 worthy of garden culture, and each of them differing 

 somewhat in colour, shape, or some other circum- 

 stance attending its growth. These, however, may 

 all be ranged under two distinctive heads, the cos 

 and the cabbage lettuce. The former grows upright, 



VOL. xv. 26 



