ON PLANTS IN RELATION TO ANIMALS. 
167 
Cabbage leaves form a good poultice for which they are 
constantly used in the country. It is cultivated in the fields 
as food for cattle and sheep. 
2. Rape is well known also as a cattle food and the seeds 
are used for the production of oil, the cake after the expres¬ 
sion of the oil being used as a cattle-feeding product under 
the name of rape cake. 
The Swedish turnip referred to under the name of Brassica 
campestris is, we feel convinced, a hybrid formed from the 
wild rape and the turnip in which its bulboid root may be 
looked upon as andnduced result of cultivation and selection, 
just as the kohl-rabbi may be considered as a cabbage with 
an induced bulboid stem. 
3. The common turnip is doubtless derived from some 
form or other of wild Brassica, but in its present shape it 
cannot be said to be a native of England ; the wildest shape 
in which we meet with it is merely of a straggler about fields 
where the root has been cultivated, in which case the bulboid 
root portion is very small, nay sometimes nearly abrogated, 
which is very different from some of the huge roots derived 
from cultivation. This year we pulled some roots even after 
the unfavourable root growth of 1879, as much as thirty-six 
inches in circumference and weighing as much as thirty 
pounds. 
Turnip greens are with some a most agreeable vegetable 
but being somewhat bitter are disliked by others, thus Kirke 
White says 
“ Maxmillian’s meal of turnip tops, 
Disgusting food for dainty chops.” 
The boiled roots are a favourite vegetable especially with 
boiled mutton, mashed turnips also may be very advanta¬ 
geously employed as a poultice especially to painful swell¬ 
ings. 
We thus see that in the Brassica allies we have an endless 
series of plants which though undoubtedly dietetic can 
hardly be looked upon as of medicinal value, still we have 
no doubt that the endless variety which is made use of of 
these as foodhave very considerably aided in almost banishing 
from our midst those scorbutic complaints which at one time 
were so general, hence then the members of this family of 
plants are universally acknowledged to be as agreeable as 
they are useful and salutary. 
