1890.] Hitstory of Garden Vegetables. 321 
in Sikh, India, Edgeworth * says the radish is cultivatetl both as 
a vegetable made of the young buds, and for its oil. In Arabia, 
Forskal ” says the foliage and not the root is eaten. The Arabs 
are very fond of the tops of radishes, says Bayard Taylor,® and 
eat them with as much relish as donkeys. Klunzinger™® de- 
scribes the radish of Upper Egypt as of a peculiar kind, of which 
as a rule the leaves only, and not the small sharp root, are eaten. 
In 1726, in England,” radishes were sown for cutting in the first 
leaf for small salads. The oil-bearing radish of China is grown 
extensively there for the seeds, from which an edible oil is ex- 
pressed, and it has been introduced and successfully cultivated in 
Italy, whence it has reached France." This esculent root has 
been known from a remote antiquity, and has furnished a number 
of forms which have remained distinct from time immemorial. If 
the figures given by Woenig™ as of the radish in the XII. 
dynasty of Egypt be the radish, we may recognize the turnip- 
rooted and the long. A. P. Decandolle™ in 1821 divided the 
radishes into two divisions, the one including the common Euro- 
pean sorts, the other the large black or white winter sorts. Asa 
matter of convenience we will treat the various forms as species, 
giving the history of each. 
I. Raphanus radicula Pers. 
This is the round or turnip radish, the root swollen into a 
spherical form, or an oval tube rounding at the extremity to a 
filiform radicle. It has several shades of color, from white to red 
or purple. Its savor is usually milder than that of the other 
56 Edgeworth. Hooker's Jour. of Bot., II., 273. 
57 Forskal. Fl. Æg.-Arab., XCIII. 
58 Bayard Taylor. Central Africa, 105. 
59 Klunzinger. Upper Egypt, 142. 
6 Townsend. Seedsman, 1726, 17. 
6l Bon Jard., 1882, 699. 
® Woenig. Die Pflanzen in Alt Ægypt, 1886, 217. 
63 Decandolle. Mem. upon the Brassicæ, 1821. 
64 Baillon. Hist. of Plants, IH., 222. 
Am, Nat.—April.—2. 
