A GLIMPSE AT THE CABBAGE. 
3 
life-history while revelling in the luscious close folded “sprout” 
or the crisp and snowy broccoli ? What ! you say, I am 
digressing from my subject and you thought my text was the 
cabbage. Nothing of the sort, I have not digressed. You see, 
the poor cabbage does not receive its just meed of praise ; the 
broccoli, the cauliflower, or the sprout steps in and claims 
more than a fair share, when we reflect that to the cabbage they 
owe their very existence. It is a satisfaction to know, however, 
that though we may not appreciate it to its full extent the 
ancients did, and that as you shall see with much vigour. And 
now let us go into things a little more specifically, and then 
afterwards you will be able to draw your own conclusions or 
cabbage them. (N.B. This is not a joke, I never commit myself 
thus before societies.) I shall want you to imagine, then, some¬ 
thing very different from the cabbage in its garden form, viz ; 
the wild cabbage, Brassica oleracea, which I will describe to you. 
B. oleracea belongs to the order Cruciferse, whose members 
all possess as the distinguishing feature the four cruciate petals 
and the tetradynamous stamens.* The root is fleshy and 
cylindrical ; the sepals erect ; the petals obovate ; and the 
silique or pod lineor and angular with very little style. The seeds 
are globose, in one row. It is a biennial, glaucous leaved, 
woody stemmed plant, and is too acrid -to make it an accept¬ 
able dish, except when young. The radical leaves are stalked 
and obovate with waved or sinuated margins, occasionally sub- 
lyrate. The upper leaves are sessile, often semi-amplexicaul. 
Flowers in lax racemes, each individual one about an inch across 
and of a light sulphur yellow colour. The pods are about three 
inches long, slightly compressed, the beak abruptly conical and 
not containing a seed. 
Such is a short description of the appearance of the wild 
B’assica ole?-acea —the common cabbage of the sea shore. It is 
abundant on the coasts of Kent, the Isle of Wight, Cornwall, 
Wales, and Yorkshire. On the Continent it is met with upon 
the cliffs of many parts of Europe, and Libthorp, a famous 
traveller of the last century, stated that he found it abundantly 
at Mt. Atlas, in the southern part of Turkey, but as this has 
not been confirmed, I believe, by any other botanist it must not 
be taken for granted. There are few plants that can boast the 
progenitorship of a more extensive series of varieties and sub- 
varieties than the one under consideration, if we pay at the 
same time respectful attention to their evident usefulness ; and 
the progression away from the type is most marked. What can 
bring this more forcibly to the mind than a simple comparision 
between the yellow flowered plant of the sea shore and the 
flowerless, compact red cabbage of the gardens ? Though the 
* Four long and two short. 
