KITCHEN VEGETABLES.

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gaol of Newgate to give to the Lord Mayor of London ,the sheriffs, and attendants, previous to proclaiming thefair of Saint Bartholomew , is derived, we suppose, fromthe circumstance of Sir W. Walworth meeting the rebelWat Tyler on the same spot, where he slew him, anno1382. It certainly appears extremely probable that ourforefathers, acting under the impression that their buglossum,or our borage, had the property of fortifying the heart, threwthe flowers into the wine, that their spirits might be moreenlivened. Caesalpitius says, it was brought from othercountries to Italy . Linnanis positively states that it cameoriginally from Aleppo ; upon what authority he made thisassertion has not been discovered.

It is said spinage, called by Kerner, spinacea oleracea , isamong those vegetables of which no trace of their name isto be discovered in antiquity. Its qative country is unknown.The name is new, and derived from the prickly nature ofits seeds. It was first used by monks, and eaten on dayson w'liich they should have fasted. At that time, it waswritten spinargium or spinachium. Meursius found inthe middle ages <rmvaxtov, in a poem which lias beenoften, mentioned, but not with sufficient accuracy defined.This plant appears to have come first from Spain . Bockand other old botanists name it olus Hispanicum. Ruel-lius, and some others, call it atriplex Hispaniensis; whilstthe Saracens called it Hispanach, which expression of theirsimplies a Spanish plant. The properties assigned to thisplant are, that it is insipid, on which account the additionof pepper and vinegar are necessary to render it pala-table; that it is readily multiplied, is indigestible, andgently aperient. This characterises its known propertieswith several other plants, as beet, orach, and a plantknown as the good king Henry, the chenopodium, bonusIlenricus of Kerner, the young leaves of which are dressedin Germany as spinage. It is also probable, from a simi-larity of properties, that the blitum of the ancients may havebeen a kind of amaranfhus, some species of which areknown to be eatable. Blitum may, therefore, remain asdifficult to be defined as malva, which was used at the sametime.

The brassices of the ancients belong certainly to the cab-bage genus ; yet it appears that no one lias yet proved theiridentity. We presume it is the large-leaved, thick, and blueor purple coloured kind of wort, said to have been sufficientlylarge to make a covering for the posteriors; from braced,breeches, slops, or brogues, or any thick and coarse cloth.