eaten; but they all offer a very slight addition to the food of man, and show in a marked manner the difference in the useful powers of a cultivated and an uncultivated soil.

Flower and Root of the Wild Parsnip.

WHITE BEET is found wild on the salt, marshy shores of Holland, and on some parts of those of England; but the root is hard, bitter, and worthless.

SALSIFY, in the same manner, which was once much used here as an esculent, and is still com

monly found growing wild, possesses no useful properties without cultivation.

ICELAND MOSS, or Lichen islandicus, is used as an edible substance by the Icelanders, who rarely ob tain corn-bread, and whose limited stock of substi tutes obliges them to have recourse to every species of vegetable production which is permitted by their inclement climate to spring forth. The plant is collected by the inhabitants of this northern region, and, after being washed, is either cut into pieces, or it is dried by the fire or in the sun, and then put into a bag, which is well beaten; it is ultimately worked into a powder by being trampled on, and in this state is used as food. This lichen is found growing on the mountains, both in the lowlands and highlands of Scotland. It consists of upright leaves nearly two inches high, soft and pliant when moist, but rigid when dry. They are smooth and shiny, inclining to a red colour towards the roots, and having the exterior surface sprinkled with very minute black warts. The margins are set with small, short, stiff spinules.

Iceland Moss-Lichen Islandicus.

The family of plants known by botanists as Cru

cifera, grow spontaneously in every field. The WILD CABBAGE, or Brassica campestris, has been found in many countries;-in France, by Bouchet and De Candolle; in Modern Greece, by Sibthorp : and it may be the same that is mentioned by Dioscorides. It grows naturally on the sea-shore near Dover. The leaves of this plant are used early in the spring as an edible; and it is said that they are superior in flavour to those of the cultivated sorts; but as it is found chiefly in situations near the sea, where there is salt in the soil or in the atmosphere, the leaves acquire a saline, bitter taste; this is, however, removed after they have been boiled in two waters. As the wild plants advance towards maturity, the purple, of which there is merely a trace in the young leaves, disperses, and the plants become harsh, bitter, and unfit for use. An accumulation of a larger portion of alkaline matter may be inferred from this fact, consequent on the well-known effect of alkali changing blue to green. A correspondent of a valuable horticultural work describes the young tops of the wild cabbage of Dover as a most delicate vegetable; but he complains that the plant is held in low estimation by the inhabitants of the place*. Doubtless they would find it cheaper to cultivate cabbages than to gather them on cliffs. Various spinaceous plants also grow wild in this country; but they will not repay the labour of gathering. Nothing is so common as SORREL, but no one here thinks the plant worth collecting. On the contrary, the Laplanders prepare these leaves, and preserve them for winter store. For this purpose they are boiled in a very small quantity of water, and stirred till reduced to a pulp. This is then mixed with milk, and put in barrels, which are kept in holes dug in the ground, and lined either with bricks or birch* Loudon's Gardener's Magazine, February 1832.

bark, to protect them from rats and mice. This preparation of sorrel was found by Linnæus to possess a very agreeable acid taste, quite different from the flavour of the fresh plant. The Laplanders, in their paucity of esculent vegetables, gladly avail them selves of those plants which other nations are in the habit of rejecting as weeds, and in some cases indeed avoid as poisonous. Linnæus informs us, on authority to which he gave credence, that the YELLOW WOLF'S-BANE-Aconitum lycoctonum-is collected in large quantities in some parts of Lapland, and boiled for the use of the table. Noxious qualities are ascribed to this plant, and to most of the species be longing to the same genus, which have, ever since the time of Theophrastus, been reckoned deadly poisons both to man and beast. The deleterious effects, however, may, as in the case of cassava, be probably dissipated by the action of heat.

ria-are boiled and used as an edible by the Swedish peasantry. The earth round the roots of this plant is sometimes washed away by the rain, leaving the small tubers exposed to view. This, in superstitious times, gave rise to the belief that it rained wheat, to the grains of which these tubercles bear some resemblance.

ASPARAGUS is a native both of South and of North Britain, growing, though not very commonly, in stony or gravelly situations near the sea. It is sometimes found on the coasts of Dorsetshire and Somersetshire, and less frequently in Seaton Links, near Edinburgh. The steppes, or dry sandy flats, in Poland and the South of Russia, which are partially saline, and probably at some period of their history have been washed by the sea, produce it much more abundantly; and in some places the ground is covered with it, to the exclusion of almost all other vegetation. When growing thus spontaneously, however, it is a diminutive plant, and is browsed as grass by horses and oxen*. None, indeed, but a practised eye, examining into the minute parts of its structure, could detect it to be the same species which is reared by artificial culture.

The inhabitants on the coast of Barbary eat the young shoots of another species of asparagus †, which one would have supposed was sufficiently unfitted by nature for the support of man. This is the thorny asparagus, or asparagus horridus, beset with sharp spines of three or four inches in length. It is said to be indigenous to Spain, as well as to the opposite coast of the Mediterranean.

SEA-CALE is found growing wild on the sandy downs near the sea, of Sweden, Denmark, England, and partially of Scotland. From time immemorial

the country people in the west of England have been Desfontaines, vol. i.

* Loudon's Encyc. of Gard.