BOOK XIX. XXXIX. 131-XL. 134 



and even more endive : indeed it pays to plant them 

 with tlie roots smeared with dung and to loosen the 

 ground round them and fill up with dung. Sorne 

 use other means also of increasing their si/.e, cutting 

 them baek when they have reached six inches high 

 and giving them a dressing of fresh swine's dung. 

 As for colour, it is thought that at all events lettuces 

 grown from white seed can be blanched if as soon as 

 they begin to grow sand from the sea-shore is heaped 

 round them up to half their height and the leaves as 

 they start sprouting are tied back against the plants 

 themselves. 



XL. Beet is the smoothest of the garden plants. Beet. 

 The Greeks distinguish two kinds of beet also, accord- 

 ing to the colour, black and whitish — they prefer the 

 hitter, which has a vcry scanty supply of sced, and call 

 it Sicilian beet ; indeed they prefer lettuce also with 

 distinctive quaUty of whiteness. Our people dis- 

 tinguish two kinds of beet according to time of sowing, 

 spring beet and autumn bect, although beet is also 

 sown in June, and the plant transplanted in autumn. 

 Beets also Hke even their roots to be smearcd with 

 dung, and have a similar hking for a damp place. 

 Beets are also made into a salad with lentils and beans, 

 and are dressed ° in the same way as cabbages, the 

 best way being to stimulate thcir insipidity with the 

 bitterncss of mustard. The doctors have pronounced 

 beet to be more unwholcsome than cabbage, on 

 account of which there are persons who scruple even 

 to taste beets when served at table ; and conse- 

 quently they are preferably an article of diet for 

 people with strong digestions. Beets have a double 

 structure, that of the cabbage, and, at the actual head 

 of the root as it springs up, that of an onion. They 



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