Cultivated as above described, the plants afford frequent cuttings of large clean cress of excellent flavour for market purposes. Sooner or later growth will become less vigorous and flowering shoots will be produced. This will be accompanied by a pronounced deterioration of the remaining vegetative shoots. These signs will be interpreted by the grower to mean that his plants, as a market crop, are worn out. He will therefore take steps to repeat the routine of culture above described. In the winter the ditches are flooded to protect the cress from frost.
The best-flavoured water-cress is produced in the pure water of running streams over chalk or gravel soil. Should the water be contaminated by sewage or other undesirable matter, the plants not only absorb some of the impurities but also serve to anchor much of the solid particles washed as scum among them. This is extremely difficult to dislodge by washing, and renders the cress a source of danger as food.
Water-cress for domestic use may be raised as a kitchen-garden crop if frequently watered overhead. Beds to afford cress during the summer should be made in broad trenches on a border facing north. It may also be raised in pots or pans stood in saucers of water and frequently watered overhead.
In recent years in America attention has been paid to the injury done to water-cress beds by the “water-cress sow-bug” (Mancasellus brachyurus), and the “water-cress leaf-beetle” (Phaedon aeruginosa). Another species of Phaedon is known in England as “blue beetle” or “mustard beetle,” and is a pest also of mustard, cabbage and kohlrabi (see F. H. Chittenden, in Bulletin 66, part ii. of Bureau of Entomology, United States Department of Agriculture, 1907).
The name “nasturtium” is applied in gardens, but incorrectly, to species of Tropaeolum.
CRESSENT, CHARLES (1685-1768), French furniture-maker, sculptor and fondeur-ciseleur. As the second son of François Cressent, sculpteur du roi, and grandson of Charles Cressent, a furniture-maker of Amiens, who also became a sculptor, he inherited the tastes and aptitudes which were likely to make a finished designer and craftsman. Even more important perhaps was the fact that he was a pupil of André Charles Boulle. Trained in such surroundings, it is not surprising that he should have reached a degree of achievement which has to a great extent justified the claim that he was the best decorative artist of the 18th century. Cressent’s distinction is closely connected with the regency, but his earlier work had affinities with the school of Boulle, while his later pieces were full of originality. He was an artist in the widest sense of the word. He not only designed and made furniture, but created the magnificent gilded enrichments which are so characteristic of his work. He was likewise a sculptor, and among his plastic work is known to have been a bronze bust of Louis, duc d’Orléans, the son of the regent, for whom Cressent had made one of the finest examples of French furniture of the 18th century—the famous médaillier now in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Cressent’s bronze mounts were executed with a sharpness of finish and a grace and vigour of outline which were hardly excelled by his great contemporary Jacques Caffieri. His female figures placed at the corners of tables are indeed among the most delicious achievements of the great days of the French metal worker. Much of Cressent’s work survives, and can be identified; the Louvre and the Wallace collection are especially rich in it, and his commode at Hertford House with gilt handles representing Chinese dragons is perhaps the most elaborate piece he ever produced. The work of identification is rendered comparatively easy in his case by the fact that he published catalogues of three sales of his work. These catalogues are highly characteristic of the man, who shared in no small degree the personal bravoura of Cellini, and could sometimes execute almost as well. He did not hesitate to describe himself as the author of “a clock worthy to be placed in the very finest cabinets,” “the most distinguished bronzes,” or pieces of “the most elegant form adorned with bronzes of extra richness.” He worked much in marqueterie, both in tortoiseshell and in brilliant coloured woods. He was indeed an artist to whom colour appealed with especial force. The very type and exemplar of the “feeling” of the regency, he is worthy to have given his own name to some of the fashions which he deduced from it.
CRESSWELL, SIR CRESSWELL (1794-1863), English judge, was a descendant of an old Northumberland family, and was born at Newcastle in 1794. He was educated at the Charterhouse and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He graduated B.A. in 1814, and M.A. four years later. Having chosen the profession of the law he studied at the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1819. He joined the northern circuit, and was not long in earning a distinguished position among his professional brethren. In 1837 he entered parliament as Conservative member for Liverpool, and he soon gained a reputation as an acute and learned debater on all constitutional questions. In January 1842 he was made a judge of the court of common pleas, being knighted at the same time; and this post he occupied for sixteen years. When the new court for probate, divorce and matrimonial causes was established (1858), Sir Cresswell Cresswell was requested by the Liberal government to become its first judge and undertake the arduous task of its organization. Although he had already earned a right to retire, and possessed large private wealth, he accepted this new task, and during the rest of his life devoted himself to it most assiduously and conscientiously, with complete satisfaction to the public. In one case only, out of the very large number on which he pronounced judgment, was his decision reversed. His death was sudden. By a fall from his horse on the 11th of July 1863 his knee-cap was injured. He was recovering from this when on the 29th of the same month he died of disease of the heart.
See Foss’s Lives of the Judges; E. Manson, Builders of our Law (1904).