But whether, under the term pastinaca, the ancients did not sometimes understand our parsnip, I will not venture to determine. I can only assert, with some degree of probability, that the latter is by Dioscorides called elaphoboscon, a name which occurs also in Pliny. The former says expressly that this plant had umbellæ with yellow flowers, and large white sweet roots fit to be eaten. Now among our umbelliferous plants, besides dill, fennel and lovage, the parsnip is the only one which has yellow flowers; at any rate I know of no other with yellow flowers and esculent roots. If the parsnip had no other names among the Greeks and the Romans, it must have been very little used by them; for it is mentioned only by Dioscorides and Pliny. At present we know that it forms excellent fodder for black cattle, sheep and swine.
It needs however excite little wonder that it is so difficult to discover these plants in the works of the Greeks and the Romans. They all belong to one natural order, the species of which can with difficulty be distinguished by the most expert botanist. I mean to say, that all the umbelliferous plants are so like to each other, that they may be readily confounded. This difficulty is still further increased by the old physicians, who used a great many plants of this kind, and named them after the kitchen vegetables to which they had a resemblance, so that by these means plants totally different occur under the same name. To distinguish these, it is necessary first to examine which of them was a kitchen vegetable, and which was used in medicine.
Among our kitchen vegetables, as among the spices, there are many kinds which, at first, were known only on account of their medicinal properties, but afterwards were esteemed and cultivated on account of their good taste. Of this kind is the scorzonera[878], which became first known in the middle of the sixteenth century, in Spain, where it was considered as an antidote to the poison of a snake called there scurzo. A Moor, who had learnt this property of it in Africa, cured with the juice of the leaves and the roots a great many peasants bitten by snakes while mowing; but he would not discover the plant, that he might retain all the advantage to himself. Some persons, however, who followed him to the mountains, where he collected it, observed that it was the Scurzonera, or Scorzonera hispanica, so called from the name of the snake. Petrus Cannizer transmitted the plant, together with a drawing of it, to John Odorich Melchior, physician to the queen of Bohemia; and the latter sent what he had obtained to Matthioli, who at that time was not acquainted with it[879]. Soon after the roots were extolled in a particular tract by Nicholas Monardes, as a powerful remedy for the poison of snakes[880]. It is probable also that these roots were first used in Spain as food, and about the beginning of the sixteenth century were carried thence to France. The anonymous author of the well-known work Le Jardinier François, who was a gardener, and dealt in trees and seeds at Paris, boasts of having been the first who introduced these roots into the French gardens. The first edition of his book, which greatly contributed to improve gardening in France, was printed in 1616. At present the roots of the scorzonera are to be found in most gardens, but no one places faith in their medicinal virtue; and when they are occasionally prescribed by any physician for a ptisan perhaps, the other kind, the Scorzonera humilis, is preferred, though in the apothecaries’ shops the Spanish, taken from the gardens, is used in its stead[881].
Among our species of the Allium genus, shallots, in consequence of their mild taste, are preferred. There can be no doubt that this name, as well as the French échalotte, is derived from Ascalonia; and the above species in the system is called Allium ascalonicum[882]. Theophrastus, Pliny, Columella, Apicius, and others, speak of a species called ascalonia, brought from the city of Ascalon, in Palestine, as we are told by Pliny, Strabo, and Stephanus. The last-mentioned author states it as a report, that the first bulbs were observed in that neighbourhood. These names are found in the oldest catalogues of the German garden vegetables. There is sufficient reason also to conjecture that our shallots were the ascaloniæ of the ancients, and that they came originally from Palestine; especially as Hasselquist found the same species growing there wild. An important doubt, however, against this opinion arises from what is said by Theophrastus and Pliny; namely, that their ascaloniæ could not be propagated by bulbs, but by seeds[883]; on the other hand, our shallots in Germany, and perhaps in every other part of Europe, never come to flower, and are obtained only by the bulbs; so that Linnæus procured the first flowers, through Hasselquist, from Palestine. But why should not all the other allium species be propagated by planting the bulbs?
[The kitchen-gardens of England were as scantily supplied with vegetables, until about the end of the sixteenth century, as the pleasure-grounds were with shrubs and flowers. “It was not,” says Hume, “till the end of the reign of Henry VIII. that any salads, carrots, turnips or other edible roots were produced in England; the little of these vegetables that was used was imported from Holland and Flanders. Queen Catherine, when she wanted a salad, was obliged to despatch a messenger thither on purpose.” Hume is not however quite correct in this point. Our ancestors, before Henry VIIIth’s time, had always their winter-cresses and water-cresses, and common Alexanders, which served them for celery; they had rampion and rocket; borage for their cool tankard, and amaranthus and goose-foot, or good Henry with sprout-kales, which they used as greens. Their fruits were neither numerous nor good, being chiefly confined to gooseberries, currants and strawberries; the apples and pears were generally indifferent, and their plums and cherries bad; although the latter are supposed to have been planted in this country so early as the year 800, at which time they were brought from Italy.
The most important of kitchen vegetables of the present day is certainly the potato. There is scarcely a doubt of the potato being a native of South America, and its existing in a wild state in elevated places in the tropical regions and in the more temperate districts of the western coast of that country. It appears probable that it was first brought into Europe from the mountainous parts of South America in the neighbourhood of Quito, to Spain, early in the sixteenth century; they were here called papas. From Spain they were carried to Italy, and there received the same name as the truffle, taratoufli. From Italy they went to Vienna, through the governor of Mons in Hainault, who sent some to Clusius in 1598. The potato arrived in England from North America, being brought from Virginia by the colonists sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584, and who returned in July 1586, and in all probability brought back the potato with them. Such is the opinion of Sir Joseph Banks; moreover, in De Bry’s Collection of Voyages[884], he describes a plant called openawk, which is in all probability identical with the potato. Gerarde, in his herbal, published in 1597, figures the potato, under the name of the potato of Virginia, whence he says he received the roots. The potato was first cultivated in Ireland by the grandfather of Sir Robert Southwell, from tubers given him by Sir W. Raleigh. Some time after, they were grown in Lancashire, as some say, being conveyed there through a shipwreck; thence their culture has gradually diffused itself throughout the country.
The great dependence for nourishment placed in the potato by so many of the poor, has been lately exhibited in the great distress caused by the disease of the crops. In addition to its use as a direct article of food, the potato is applied to furnish starch, which is not unfrequently substituted for arrow-root and sugar.
In the year 1619, the common market-price of the potato was 1s. per lb.]
FOOTNOTES
[843] [The very reverse of this is now generally admitted, and the prosperity of a country may be judged of from the amount of sugar consumed in it.]