PREFACE 



xi 



Seedsmen and growers, at home, in our colonies, and in foreign 

 countries, are compelled again and again to buy old things under 

 new names, and to test them before embarking in their sale. If 

 the practice were confined to the really new kinds raised, it would 

 be fair. A common way of giving these new names is to secure a 

 well-selected stock of seed of some old, good kind, and re-name 

 it. Of late years we have seen in London, Orchid, Pear, and 

 other conferences, which have had really little more serious 

 raison d'etre than the vanity or amusement of their promoters. 

 The nomenclature of our most valuable garden crops might 

 well occupy the attention of a body composed of representative 

 seedsmen and growers. It would not be very difficult to seek 

 out and give their true names to all the older and finer types 

 of our vegetables, and prevent confusion in the future without 

 interfering with the right to name a real novelty in a fitting 

 way. 



Even if we have all we desire in the way of good culture and 

 varieties, there remains the question of cookery, which is sadly 

 Improved need of change with us. In places of public resort 

 Cookery of where the best meat, game, and fish are to be had, 

 Vegetables and the cooking of even the commonest vegetables is 

 Cereals. disgraceful. Ill gathered, overgrown, they are so 

 cooked as to be uneatable. There is a movement now in the 

 way of cooking the best vegetables in their own juices, by braising 

 and stewing ; and not throwing their nutritious juices away in 

 quantities of water. However much our own cookery may im- 

 prove in this way, much more is to be expected from the study 

 of the ways of nations who live almost wholly on vegetable food. 

 The best Italian cooks treat rice and the products of wheat so 

 well that they form a complete and delicious food ; the Indian 

 vegetable curries are famous, and the Arabs have very agreeable 

 dishes of vegetable food delicately flavoured. Among these 

 people we see that good cookery even of a few simple things 

 will give complete nourishment to man. How much more, 

 therefore, might be expected from the vast range and variety of 

 foods within our reach in all fertile countries, and how well 

 worth our while it is to improve our ways of dealing with them ! 

 This concerns not only green vegetables, but cereals, pulse, roots, 

 and fruits. 



Books do not help us much in this way, because they are 



