ion. The flower heads are of a bright blue
colour, few in number, and measure nearly an inch and a half across.
Chicory is cultivated much more extensively on the continent of
Europe--in Holland, Belgium, France and Germany--than in Great Britain;
and as a cultivated plant it has three distinct applications. Its roots
roasted and ground are used as a substitute for, adulterant of, or
addition to coffee; both roots and leaves are employed as salads; and
the plant is grown as a fodder or herbage crop which is greedily
consumed by cattle. In Great Britain it is chiefly in its first
capacity, in connexion with coffee, that chicory is employed. A large
proportion of the chicory root used for this purpose is obtained from
Belgium and other neighbouring continental countries; but a considerable
quantity is cultivated in England, chiefly in Yorkshire. For the
preparation of chicory the older stout white roots are selected, and
after washing they are sliced up into small pieces and kiln-dried. In
this condition the material is sold to the chicory roaster, by whom it
is roasted till it assumes a deep brown colour; afterwards when ground
it is in external characteristics very like coffee, but is destitute of
its pleasing aromatic odour. Neither does the roasted chicory possess
any trace of the alkaloid caffeine which gives their peculiar virtues to
coffee and tea. The fact, however, that for over a hundred years it has
been successfully used as a substitute for or recognized addition to
coffee, while in the meantime innumerable other substances have been
tried for the same purpose and abandoned, indicates that it is agreeable
and harmless. It gives the coffee additional colour, bitterness and
body. It is at least in very extensive and general use; and in Belgium
especially its infusion is largely drunk as an independent beverage.

The blanched leaves are much esteemed by the French as a winter salad
known by the name of _Barbe de capucin_. When intended for winter use,
chicory is sown in May or June, commonly in drills, and the plants are
thinned out to 4 in. apart. If at first the leaves grow very strong,
they are cut off, perhaps in the middle of August, about an inch from
the ground, so as to promote the production of new leaves, and check the
formation of flower-stems. About the beginning of October the plants are
raised from the border, and all the large leaves cut off; the roots are
also shortened, and they are then planted p