cle which cannot lie, that the time will come, and is now in progress, when the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord; and when the Sun of Righteousness shall shed the glories of His rays over the whole world. I shall not pretend to fix the period of this blessed era, or dare to pry into "the times and seasons which God has put in his own power." But one thing is certain, whenever that blessed period arrives, the lights of reason and revelation will unite their rays, and it shall be made manifest, that even worldly ingenuity (though it meant not so) has been preparing its discoveries, and elaborating its inventions, to add to the comfort and happiness of the children of the Redeemer. Then science will bestow its knowledge to elevate the devotion of saints, and commerce will give its ships and its engines to facilitate their intercourse; and all the necessaries and conveniences which civilization shall have accumulated, will be employed to fill their hearts with gratitude to the Giver of all good. Then education will open its schools to teach the wonderful things of God; and learning will yield its libraries, and art its stores, to feed the soul with knowledge, and enlarge its powers. Then all things will be sanctified by being employed to promote the glory of God and the good of men; and it will be felt and acknowledged that genius has not labored, nor science advanced, in vain. Thus shall Providence be vindicated in his dealings with the human race, and all shall be well.

THIRD WEEK-MONDAY.

HORTICULTURE.-VARIOUS GARDEN VEGETABLES.

It would not be consistent with the object of this work, to enter much further into a description of the individual plants, which form the produce of the kitchen-garden. The specimens already given, serve to show, in two different species, the provision which the Creator has made for the supply of wholesome varieties of food, that may be

rendered, by the arts of cultivation, exceedingly prolific, and seem thus destined to add to those resources, by which field and garden labor shall continue, to a period and extent not easily calculated, to satisfy the wants of a rapidly increasing population, and by such means to increase most materially the numbers of living beings, and especially of the human species, on the surface of the globe.

What, before leaving this department of our subject, remains chiefly to be shown, is the great variety of esculent vegetables, in point of quality and flavor, as well as mode of growth, which it has pleased the Creator to place in the hands of the horticulturist. In reference to the

latter, there is no part of a plant which we do not find, in some particular species, fit for food. The root, the bulb, the stalk, the leaf, the flower, the seed, each in its turn, is gifted with those qualities, which render it a valuable and agreeable material for culinary purposes. Some of these varieties have already been noticed;—as an instance of edible seeds, I have mentioned the pea and the bean; of edible leaves, the cabbage; of edible flowers, the cauliflower; of edible bulbs, the turnip; of edible roots, the potato :-but of all these there are other kinds, to some of which I shall now shortly advert.

Among roots may be particularized, the carrot, the parsnip, the beet, the skerret, and the scorzonera.* The two latter are now almost excluded from the list of vegetables cultivated in the gardens of Great Britain, having been superseded by the more favorite varieties which the others afford, although the scorzonera is a particularly delicate kind of food, and might with advantage be retained. The carrot and parsnip are found wild in the country; but the experiments which have been made on these native plants have not succeeded in rendering them fit for garden. culture; and, like many other of our vegetable productions, they seem to have required a more genial climate

* [The skerret, or skirret, is the Sium sisarum, a species of waterparsnip, and nearly allied to the celery and parsley. The scorzonera is related to the endive, dandelion, lettuce, salsafy, &c. Neither of these two vegetables is at present much cultivated in New England. The latter is hardly known.-AM. ED.]

for the developement of their esculent qualities; although, when once developed, these are retained without degenerating under the ordinary routine of our gardens. The carrot is particularly prized as an agreeable variety at our tables, and, in some parts of the country, it is even extensively raised in the field for the consumption of stock, and, in various instances, with great advantage. Take the following example:-"At Partington, in Yorkshire, the stock of a farm, consisting of twenty working horses, four bullocks, and six milch cows, were fed, from the end of September to the beginning of May, on the carrots produced from three acres of land. The animals, during the whole of that period, lived on these roots, with the addition of only a very small quantity of hay; and thirty hogs were fattened on the refuse left by the cattle."* The nutritive qualities of carrots and parsnips are found to be nearly equal, the former containing ninety-eight, and the latter ninety-nine, parts of nutritious matter in one thousand, of which there are in the carrot three, and in the parsnip nine, parts of mucilage, the rest being saccharine substance.

The beet, according to Sir Humphrey Davy's analysis, contains more nutritive matter than any other root, excepting the potato, the quantity being one hundred and fortyeight parts in one thousand, or nearly fifteen per cent., of which about twelve per cent. is saccharine matter. This large proportion of the latter substance has led to various experiments for its employment in the production of sugar, which has ended in the establishment of this manufacture in France, by the imposition of excessive duties on the importation of sugar from the colonies, a public act of more than doubtful policy.†

Examples of garden herbs, which, like the brassica

* Library of Entertaining Knowledge,-Vegetable Substances, p. 244. "The cultivation of the beet," truly observes the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, "is but one ramification of that system of repulsion and exclusion, which has been adopted in France, to the oppression of her domestic industry, the ruin of her foreign commerce, and the maintenance of false principles in the commercial policy of surrounding nations."-No. xii.

species, supply varieties of vegetable food in their leaves, are to be found in the spinach and lettuce. The former takes its name from its Moorish appellation, Hispanach, or Spanish plant, having been first brought into Europe through the medium of Spain, probably from the west of Asia, where it was early famous for its supposed medicinal qualities. Spinach is an annual plant, having large and succulent leaves. It is chiefly remarkable in botany as being one of that class of vegetables, which has the different parts of fructification on separate plants, hence named diacious. There is a species of spinach, indigenous in England, called, somewhat fantastically, Good King Harry, or English Mercury. It is a perennial, and has large arrow-shaped leaves, powdered on the under side. The stem is also powdered, and is upright, thick, and striated. When young, both the stem and the leaves are succulent, the former being used as an asparagus, and the latter as a spinach. It is cultivated in Lincolnshire, where it is preferred to common spinach; but it does not easily accommodate itself to differences of soil and situation. This probably arises from the circumstance of its having been only recently brought into a state of cultivation; for it is worthy of remark, that, among other advantageous changes produced in the character of plants, that of superior docility, as it may be called, is acquired by long subjection to training.

Lettuce is used in its raw state with the dessert, made up with other garden herbs into a salad, and is of so easy growth, and so cooling and agreeable in its qualities, as to be a universal favorite. The species comprises many varieties, all of which possess a milky juice, which is slightly narcotic. This juice is very bitter, and when it becomes abundant, which takes place as the plant advances towards the period of flowering, it ceases to be used at the table. Of late, the narcotic principle of the lettuce has been employed in medicine, under the name of lactucarium; and it is believed to possess the virtues of opium, in a mild degree, without producing the same deleterious effects. It has, in some places, become an object of culture for this particular object.

The endive, a native of China, and the succory or wild endive, which is indigenous in Britain and throughout Europe, are employed also as salads, and afford other instances of plants being propagated for their edible leaves.

Of the productions of the garden which have esculent bulbs, the onion is the most remarkable. It is not very nourishing, nor agreeable in its odor, but it possesses a pleasant pungency of taste, which renders it very acceptable as a relish for food. This bulb has been an object of cultivation for at least 4000 years. We read in Scripture of the highly-prized onions of Egypt, where the plant is still a favorite article of food. Hasselquist speaks of the Egyptian onion as one of the greatest delicacies in the world, and says, "There is no wonder that the Israelites regretted its loss, and wished to return to servitude, that they might enjoy it !"

Among garden plants, the shoots of which are used at the table, I may particularize the asparagus and the celery, the top of the former being eaten, and the blanched lower parts of the footstalks of the latter. The former was cultivated by the ancients, and was held in much esteem in the classic ages. “The head of the young shoot of asparagus is edible just as far as the part that is to flower extends; and thus, one who eats a head of asparagus, eats, in that little space, the rudiments of many hundreds of branches, and many thousands of leaves."*

I shall not extend this enumeration further. My object has been accomplished, so far as relates to the variety of forms in which the Author of Nature has produced esculent vegetables, although but a very small part of that variety has been noticed. What are still more worthy of observation, as indicating benevolent design, are the differences which exist in the taste and flavor of these productions. In this particular, they all vary from each other. Each produces its own peculiar excitement on the organs of taste, and thus gives rise to very many agreeable sensations. Our great Milton has thought it

* Vegetable Substances, p. 276.