KITCHEN VEGETABLES.

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long series of years; whereby, the degrees of perfection,according to the attention which has been bestowed uponthem, renders them as various as almost to occasion adoubt whether the various individuals are of the samespecies. The chief of our modern kitchen vegetables wereimported hither immediately from Holland, and the Flemishand Spanish Netherlands , so late as the days of QueenElizabeth; and in fact, long since her time, the courtused to be supplied with salads daily from Holland. WithKing William HI. the method of Dutch cultivation in ourgardens was introduced.

The inhabitants of those districts, there is occasion tobelieve, originally received those, the chief of their escu-lents from Italy ; except the potatoe, which we believe tobe a production of South America, brought to Ireland fromGuayana, or Surinam .

Few were the plants that were originally cultivated inEngland : the chief, there is room to believe, were thecabbage, turnip, carrot, parsnip, leeks, onions, and somefew others: and so slow does improvement advance, inpublic institutions in particular, that in that excellent pub-lic endowment attached to Christ’s Hospital, called theBlue Coat School, founded by King Edward VI . the useof that very valuable root, the potatoe, is not yet introducedinto general use. There are, doubtless, many as singularanomalies in numerous others of our public institutions, didtime permit us to make the inquiry ; which would have beendone, notwithstanding, but' we were apprehensive of meet-ing no better reward than the unfortunate critic who pre-sented the faults of a contemporary poet to the god of song,expecting a reward : the deity desired him to select theparticles of corn from a measure of corn in the chart'; whenlie had done so, he was presented"with the chart' for hispains.

Culture frees plants from their harsh and unpleasant taste,renders them tender, larger, and more nutritive; whenthese improvements are made, the plant in its wild state isconsidered unfit for use. Cultivation has also another verymaterial benefit, it causes those plants to be produced inseasons when wild ones will not grow. This, of course, en-hances their value greatly.

Many of our foreign plants require most laborious atten-tion to make them thrive in our uncongenial climate; whilstsome flourish so well and so readily increase, that they runspeedily to wildness in any soil having the inclemency of air,winds, &c. to combat with. Suchis their luxuriance that it is