i8a On the Campus 



trate the point. Along the shores of northern Europe, 

 especially along the coasts of Helgoland, occurs a curious 

 smooth, bluish, mustard-like plant, called by Linne Bras- 

 sica oleracea. In cultivation the leaves of this plant 

 grow so much faster than the internodes or stem that 

 they do not have time to unroll, and we have cabbage. 1 

 Now the number of varieties of cabbage is very great, 

 from the little tough gnarly forms that our fathers knew, 

 to the great purple spheroids offered by your modern 

 gardeners and grocers. But, cabbage is only Brassica 

 olerecea responding to man's preference for its mon- 

 strous leaves; not quite a foliage plant, perhaps, but 

 practically that. It was for this our ancestors learned 

 to prize it. It is significant that in German cabbage is 

 called kraut; weeds are called unkraut; i. e., not kraut, 

 indicating that for a time, at least, cabbage formed the 

 only plant in Germany whose leaves might be used as an 

 article of food. But in Brittany the farmers take the 

 same plant and by continued plucking off of the leaves 

 rear at length a lofty stem, ten to fourteen feet in height, 

 which when dry may be used as a pole, a rafter, or for 

 other constructional purpose. In Belgium the terminal 

 bud is encouraged to unfold, by plucking the lower leaves 

 until a form has been obtained which develops instead 

 of a single terminal head a multitude of minor heads, one 

 in the axil of each leaf in fact, and we have Brussels 

 sprouts. Nor is this all. Certain types of the plant 

 have been taught to bloom in an abnormal way. Men 

 found the flowerstalks and flowers a pleasant succulent 

 and lo, cauliflower is the result, formed from the same 

 i From caput, head. 



