66 SEA-SIDE PLANTS. 



account the wild plants, cook and eat them. Bo- 

 tanists very generally believe the little wild Carrot 

 to be the origin of the valuable cultivated vegetable; 

 but Miller and other horticulturists have taken 

 great pains, by culture, to change the carrot of our 

 waysides into the edible one, and have failed. If, 

 therefore, our native species was that from which 

 this valuable root sprung originally, it is probable 

 that the plant was first cultivated under a warmer 

 temperature than that of our island. The Carrot 

 was first sown in England in the reign of Queen 

 Elizabeth, by the Flemings, who were compelled 

 by the tyranny of Philip the Second, to take refuge 

 on our shores. Our countrymen, at that period, 

 knew little of vegetable gardening, and the refugees 

 finding that the soil about Sandwich, in Kent, was 

 favourable for the growth of one of their favourite 

 articles of diet, they soon sowed their seeds in the 

 soil. It shortly became a plant of general cul- 

 ture here, and it is not improbable that its seeds 

 dispersed themselves, and so naturalized the plant 

 in this island. It is cultivated most successfully 

 in a soil mixed with sand, and we generally find a 

 good deal of the wild plant on sandy coasts. Our 

 word carrot is from the Celtic, car, red. 



The Wild Celery or Smallage (Apium graveolens) 

 is another umbelliferous plant common on our 

 coasts, though not peculiar to the sea-side, and a 

 frequent plant of the salt marshes is the Parsley- 

 water Dropwort ( (Enantlie pimpinelloides) , with its 

 flesh-coloured flowers growing on a stem about 

 two feet high. This dropwort is certainly a most 

 dangerous poison when growing in some of its 

 native spots, yet soil and culture have a peculiar 

 effect on it, and it is cultivated about Angers for 



