_ sea-cliffs of some parts of England. 
602 
The wild cabbage grows wild on the rocky 
shores of Great Britain, and particularly on the 
Its root is 
fusiform, and somewhat hard; its leaves are 
smooth, glaucous, waved, irregularly lobed, some- 
what thick or fleshy, and generally rather lyrate- 
shaped; its flowers are yellow, and appear from 
April till June; and its pods are not beaked. 
Except for the colour and smoothness of its leaves, 
it presents, when in flower, a considerable resem- 
| blance to charlock, Sinapis arvensis ; and though 
the parent of numerous, prominent, and valuable 
kinds of both field and garden esculents, it is it- 
self utterly undeserving of cultivation, and takes 
rank with some of the most worthless sorts of 
bulky weeds. “The brassica oleracea,” remarks 
Dr. Neill, “is a plant indigenous to our rocky 
shores; but no one, seeing it waving its foliage 
in its native habitat, could possibly anticipate 
that it would ever appear in our gardens, dis- 
guised as the ponderous drum-head or sugar-loaf 
cabbage, or on our tables as the delicate cauli- 
flower or broccoli. 
The cow cabbage, B. 0. acephala arborescens, is 
ene of the most remarkable of the field subvarie- 
ties; and has frequently been the subject of ex- 
aggerated recommendation and wildly impas- 
sioned eulogy. It also bears the names of Anjou 
cabbage, Jersey kale, branching cabbage, Czesa- 
rian cole, chou chevalier, chou a vaches, and 
several other designations. Its root is large and 
_ spreading; its stem is upright, strong, and usu- 
ally from five to ten feet high; its branches are 
numerous, and form a head upon the stem some- 
what similar to that of a palm; both its stem and 
its branches are very hard and almost ligneous ; 
and its leaves are small, thin, smooth, and vivid 
green. It is extensively cultivated in Jersey and 
in some of the north-western parts of France; 
and is there used, not only for the forage of its 
leaves, but for the ligneous value of its stems. It 
seems, like almost every other subvariety of 
Brassica oleracea, to have undergone modifica- 
tions from natural hybridizing; and, in conse- 
quence, it has, under new names and with slight 
changes of appearance, been again and again in- 
troduced to the attention of British farmers, and 
as frequently dismissed. The Anjou cabbage 
form of it had great though brief popularity about 
the middle of last century, and was introduced 
to England from the French estates of the Mar- 
quis of Turbilly. “This kind of cabbage,” said 
the Marquis, “is one of the most useful legumi- 
nous plants for country people. It is greatly 
esteemed in Anjou, Poitou, Brittany, Le Maine, 
and some other neighbouring provinces. In 
Anjou, farmers are bound by their leases to plant 
yearly a certain number of these cabbages, and 
to leave a certain number of them standing when 
they quit their farms. This cabbage forms a kind 
of shrub, the great utility of which may be ga- 
thered from this, that its leaves afford nourish- 
ment to men and cattle, and its stalk, which is | 
free = 
CABBAGE. 
about the thickness of one’s wrist, is used, when 
dry, for fuel.” A kind of cow cabbage cultivated 
in La Vendee, and strongly recommended about 
eighteen years ago to the notice of British far- 
mers, is said to attain, in its native district, a 
height of from 12 to 18 feet. “Sixty plants of 
it,” reported Mr. Hamilton of Plymouth, “are 
said to afford sufficient provender for one cow for 
a year ; and as the side shoots only are to be used, 
it lasts four years without fresh planting. A 
square of sixty feet will contain 256 plants, four 
feet apart, or sixteen more than four cows require 
for a year’s provender, without the aid of other 
food.” The kind of cow cabbage called the Ca- 
sarian cole was introduced to England by Mr. 
Fullard, and was asserted by that gentleman’s 
cowherd to be so superlatively prolific, that five 
plants of it per day are, with proper manage- 
ment, sufficient for ten oxen or for one hundred 
sheep. In 1836, living plants of it six feet high, 
and raised from seed which had been purchased 
at a shilling a-grain, were exhibited at the Bed- 
ford conservatory in Covent Garden; and some | 
plants of it in the ordinary course of culture are 
said to attain a height of twelve feet, and a cir- 
cumference of from fifteen to twenty feet, and to 
possess stems of sufficient strength to be used as 
rafters for the thatched-roofs of farm-buildings. 
Another kind of cow cabbage recently introduced 
from France is called Chou Laponic or Lapland 
cabbage, and differs very slightly from the other 
kinds, yet may be considered as slightly improved. 
The Jersey kale, though usually regarded as a | 
cow cabbage, seems to possess an intermediate 
character between that subvariety and the thou- | 
An account of it which | 
sand-headed cabbage. 
appeared about fifteen years ago, and drew con- 
siderable attention, says, “It is much cultivated 
in Jersey, and attains the height of from four to 
ten or twelve feet. The little farmers feed their 
cows with the leaves, plucking them from the 
stem as they grow, and leaving a bunch or head at 
the top. The stems are very strong, and used for 
roofing small out-buildings; and after this purpose 
is answered, and they are become dry, they are 
used for fuel. When the gathering of the leaves 
is finished at the end of the year, the terminating 
bud or head is boiled, and said to be particularly 
sweet.” But all the eulogistic accounts of the 
Jersey kale and of the several kinds of true cow 
cabbage have been found by experiment to be 
essentially fallacious and mightily deceptive. An 
acre of common red clover, under any ordinary 
circumstances, probably yields as large an amount 
of nutritive matter, and quite as profitable an ag- 
gregate return, as an acre of any average sort of 
cow cabbage. 
The thousand-headed cabbage, B. 0. acephala 
vulgaris, presents a considerable resemblance to 
the cow-cabbage, but is more compact in its 
head, and both rougher and darker-coloured in 
its leaves. About 40 years ago, Mons. Lecochere 
cultivated it to a considerable extent in the 
, 
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? 
