lberts, and
chestnuts; and when the guild of the fruiterers of Paris received its
statutes in 1608, they were still called "vendors of fruits and _aigrun_."

The vegetables and cooking-plants noticed in the "Menagier de Paris,"
which dates from the fourteenth century, and in the treatise "De
Obsoniis," of Platina (the name adopted by the Italian Bartholomew
Sacchi), which dates from the fifteenth century, do not lead us to suppose
that alimentary horticulture had made much progress since the time of
Charlemagne. Moreover, we are astonished to find the thistle placed
amongst choice dishes; though it cannot be the common thistle that is
meant, but probably this somewhat general appellation refers to the
vegetable-marrow, which is still found on the tables of the higher
classes, or perhaps the artichoke, which we know to be only a kind of
thistle developed by cultivation, and which at that period had been
recently imported.

About the same date melons begin to appear; but the management of this
vegetable fruit was not much known. It was so imperfectly cultivated in
the northern provinces, that, in the middle of the sixteenth century,
Bruyerin Champier speaks of the Languedocians as alone knowing how to
produce excellent _sucrins_--"thus called," say both Charles Estienne and
Liebault in the "Maison Rustique," "because gardeners watered them with
honeyed or sweetened water." The water-melons have never been cultivated
but in the south.

Cabbages, the alimentary reputation of which dates from the remotest
times, were already of several kinds, most of which have descended to us;
amongst them may be mentioned the apple-headed, the Roman, the white, the
common white head, the Easter cabbage, &c.; but the one held in the
highest estimation was the famous cabbage of Senlis, whose leaves, says an
ancient author, when opened, exhaled a smell more agreeable than musk or
amber. This species no doubt fell into disuse when the plan of employing
aromatic herbs in cooking, which was so much in repute by our ancestors,
was abandoned.

[Illustration: Fig. 79.--Coat-of-arms of the Grain-measurers of Ghent, on
their Ceremonial Banner, dated 1568.]

By a strange coincidence, at the same period as marjoram, carraway seed,
sweet basil, coriander, lavender, and rosemary were used to add their
pungent flavour to sauces and hashes, on the same tables might be found
herbs of the coldest and most insipid kinds, such as mallows, some kinds
of m