This last plant, though affording a sweet and mild nutriment, has naturally a degree of pungency and rankness.

G. That, I suppose, is the reason why turnipy milk and butter have such a strong taste.

T. It is.

H. Then why do they feed cows with it?

T. In this case, as in many others, quality is sacrificed to quantity. But the better use of turnips to the farmer is to fatten sheep and cattle. By its assistance he is enabled to keep many more of these animals than he could find

grass or hay for; and the culture of turnips prepares his land for grain as well, or better, than could be done by letting it lie quite fallow. The turnip-husbandry, as it is called, is one of the capital modern improvements of agriculture. G. I think I have heard that Norfolk is famous for it.

T. It is so. That county abounds in light sandy lands, which are peculiarly suitable to turnips. But they are now grown in many parts of the kingdom besides. Well-but we must say somewhat more about cabbage, an article of food of very long standing. The original species of this is a sea-side plant, but cultivation has produced a great number of varieties well known in our gardens, as white and red cabbage, kale, colewort, broccoli, borecole,and cauliflower.

H. But the flower of cauliflower does not seem at all like that of cabbage or turnip.

T. The white head, called its flower, is not properly so, but consists of a cluster of imperfect buds. If they are left to grow for seed, they throw out some spikes of yellow flowers like common cabbage. of the same kind.

Broccoli heads are
As to the head of

white or red cabbage, it consists of a vast number of leaves closing round each other, by which the innermost are prevented from expanding, and remain white on account of the exclusion of the light and air. This part, you know, is most valued for food. In some countries they cut cabbage heads into quarters, and make them undergo a kind of acid fermentation; after which they are salted and preserved for winter food under the name of sour krout.

G. Cattle, too, are sometimes fed with cabbage, I believe.

T. Yes, and large fields of them are cultivated for that purpose. They succeed best in stiff clayey soils, where they sometimes grow to an enormous bigness. They are given to milch kine as well as to fattening cattle.

G. Do not they give a bad taste to the milk?

T. They are apt to do so unless great

care is taken to pick off all the decayed leaves.

Coleworts, which are a smaller sort of cabbage, are sometimes grown for feeding sheep and cattle. I think I have now mentioned most of the useful plants of this family, which you see are numerous and important. They both yield beef and mutton, and the sauce to them. But many of the species. are troublesome weeds. You see how yonder corn is overrun with yellow flowers.

G. Yes they are as thick as if they had been sown.

T. They are of this family, and called charlock, or wild mustard, or corn kale, which, indeed, are not all exactly the same things, though nearly resembling. These produce such plenty of seeds, that it is very difficult to clear a field of them, if once they are suffered to grow till the seeds ripen.

An extremely common weed in gardens and by road-sides is shepherd's-purse, which is a very good specimen of the pouch-bearing plants of this tribe, its seed-vessels being exactly the figure of a heart. Ladysmock is often so abundant a weed in wet meadows as to make them all over white with their flowers. Some call this plant cuckooHower, because its flowering is about the same time with the first appearance of that bird in the spring.

G. I remember some pretty lines in a song about spring, in which ladysmock is mentioned :

When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And ladysmocks all silver white;
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,
Do paint the meadows with delight.

T. They are Shakespear's. You see he gives the name of cuckoo-bud to some other flower, a yellow one,