2 
THE NATURALISTS' JOURNAL, 
A GLIMPSE AT THE CABBAGE AND 
SOME CABBAGE EATERS* 
By H. Durrant. 
Good, sweet Euripides! 
Grant me but this. I’ll ask no more, but go— 
Some cabbage leaves — 
The Acharnians , Aristophanes. 
Good worts : good cabbage. 
Merry Wives of Windsor, Act I., Scene I. 
Part I. The Cabbage and Some Varieties. 
Gentlemen, 
To night we are to have a glimpse at a subject which is not 
dry by any means au contrarie , it is quite succulent ! Little 
praise has been accorded the cabbage goodness knows, and a 
“ wee bit ” eulogy I feel sure will not be out of place. The 
tenderhearted article of food has been and is the butt of every 
comic writer and artist. It has braved the ordeal of the stage 
too, we all remember the mirth that attended the low comedian's 
extraction of it from the basket and what a monstrous Black 
Jack it was. 
Coming lower down the precipitous scale of moral dignity 
we find that it (in name, anyway) is applied to the pieces of cloth 
reserved as perquisites by the wretched tailors who make up 
gentlemens’ slop suits from their own materials, and besides 
this, designates the action, as thus : “ your tailor instead of 
shreds, cabbages whole yards of cloth.’ 1 1 
Cu?'culio pleurostigma. 
A, Larvae in situ , B. C. pleurostigma (magn.). 
Gentlemen, have you ever for one moment considered (away 
from your dinner table) the urgent claims the cabbage has on us 
as one of the most valuable and useful vegetables we have ? 
Very rarely I think. Have you ever given a thought to its 
* Read before the North Kent Entomological and Natural History Society 
on March ist, 1893. 
t John Bull, Arbuthnot, 
