240 HOME AND GARDEN 



during the last two hundred years, since their intro- 

 duction and cultivation as field crops for the winter 

 feeding of the live-stock of the farm. For before that 

 time all sheep and cattle, except those reserved for 

 breeding, Avere killed and salted at the beginning of 

 winter, and the meat-eating population for several 

 months of the year had salted meat only. Cases of 

 scurvy and leprosy and allied disorders were then 

 frequent throughout the country ; but thanks to 

 Cabbage and Turnip, now in every cottage garden 

 or allotment, and to their winter use on farms, those 

 terrible diseases are no longer with us. 



Several important occupants of the kitchen garden, 

 though not so nearly related as Cabbage and Turnip, 

 come within the great botanical family of the 

 Cruciferce — plants that have all four-petalled blooms. 

 Among these are some of our best-known garden 

 flowers, such as Wall-fiowers and Stocks, Iberis and 

 Alyssum. Rape, so much cultivated on the Continent 

 under the name of Colza, for the oil of its seeds, is 

 botanically almost identical with Turnip. Then, again, 

 Rape and Mustard are very closely connected ; the 

 round " Mustard " seed that we sow for the quickly- 

 grown seed-leaves, as one of the firm of Mustard and 

 Cress, is very often Rape seed, which does nearly as 

 well. The rank weed Charlock, with rough leaf and 

 yellow flower, which comes up so freely on waste 

 ground and on heaps of newly-moved soil, is our 

 native wild Mustard. 



