THE KITCHEN GARDEN 



239 



of the Cabbage as an article of food may probably 

 have come about ; how the hungry savage, wandering 

 on the seashore and seeing the rather succulent plant, 

 tries it and finds it eatable, and by degrees brings it 

 into cultivation. This picture came home to me all 

 the more forcibly because I had already, many years 

 ago, had the same kind of idea about another sea- 

 side plant in connection with some possibly food- 

 hunting Ancient Briton, who v/ould find his Sea-kale 

 with its tender stems blanched, not only by its natural 

 habit of rooting deeply in the loose sea-sand, but often 

 to a nuich greater degree, from the increased depth 

 over the plants of sand wind-blown, or high-heaped 

 by the shovelling-power of tide and storm combined. 

 And so my Ancient Briton would have learnt not 

 only that Sea-kale was good to eat, but that it was 

 all the better when, after winter storms, the tender 

 young growths were pushing up through the over- 

 loading covering of sand, and so he may have learned 

 the general principle of earthing-up, such as we 

 practise with Celery and Cardoons and some of our 

 winter salads. 



I have more than once found how sweet and 

 tender and how little bitter is the whitened growth 

 of a wild Dandelion (near relation of the Lettuces) 

 when it has been blanched and drawn out in length 

 by having to grow through a mole-hill. 



Professor Miall also tells of the immense benefit 

 that we have received from the Cabbages and Turnips 



