plant, says McIntosh, is mostly
confined to the sea-shore, and grows only on chalky or calcareous
soils.

Thus through the wisdom of the Great Father of us all, who occasionally
in his great garden allows vegetables to sport into a higher form of
life, and grants to some of these sports sufficient strength of
individuality to enable them to perpetuate themselves, and, at times, to
blend their individuality with that of other sports, we have the heading
cabbage in its numerous varieties, the creamy cauliflower, the feathery
kale, the curled savoy. On my own grounds from a strain of seed that had
been grown isolated for years, there recently came a plant that in its
structure closely resembled Brussels Sprouts, growing about two feet in
height, with a small head under each leaf. The cultivated cabbage was
first introduced into England by the Romans, and from there nearly all
the kinds cultivated in this country were originally brought. Those
which we consider as peculiarly American varieties, have only been made
so by years of careful improvement on the original imported sorts. The
characteristics of these varieties will be given farther on.

WHAT A CABBAGE IS.

If we cut vertically through the middle of the head, we shall find it
made up of successive layers of leaves, which grow smaller and smaller,
almost _ad infinitum_. Now, if we take a fruit bud from an apple-tree
and make a similar section of it, we shall find the same structure. If
we observe the development of the two, as spring advances, we shall find
another similarity (the looser the head the closer will be the
resemblance),--the outer leaves of each will unwrap and unfold, and a
flower stem will push out from each. Here we see that a cabbage is a
bud, a seed bud (as all fruit buds may be termed, the production of
seed being the primary object in nature, the fruit enclosing it playing
but a secondary part), the office of the leaves being to cover, protect,
and afterwards nourish the young seed shoot. The outer leaves which
surround the head appear to have the same office as the leaves which
surround the growing fruit bud, and that office closes with the first
year, as does that of the leaves surrounding fruit buds, when each die
and drop off. In my locality the public must have perceived more or less
clearly the analogy between the heads of cabbage and the buds of trees,
for when they speak of small heads they frequently call them "buds."
That the