bitter, and then fry them in oil or butter; they are also sliced and pickled for a few hours, and then boiled green, or served in the same manner as mashed turnips; either way," says Lunan," they are an agreeable food, and accounted to be aphrodisiac, and to cure sterility: when boiled with wine and pepper, they taste like artichokes." A lady who has many years resided in Jamaica, favoured the author with the following receipt for dressing vegetable eggs :---The inside, after being scooped out, to be fried either in oil or butter, and the outside to be boiled whole, and when drained, to be filled with the fried parts, and sent to table apparently whole, as a dish of eggs. She informed him, that when dressed in the common way, they should be cut into slices, and soaked in salt and water for a few hours, to extract the bitter taste.

The French make great use of the purple variety of this egg-shaped fruit, which they call Aubergine, and which is as common as the love-apple in the vegetable markets of Paris. Their favourite method of dressing them, is by taking out the seeds with a scoop, filling the cavity with sweet herbs, and then frying them whole.

In England, the egg plant is principally cultivated for its singular and curious appearance, few families even knowing that they are proper for aliment, excepting those who have resided on the Continent, or who have studied the natural history of plants. They are rarely brought into the London markets, and then so eagerly secured by foreign cooks, that they are seldom seen exposed for sale.

The manner of propagating them, in this country, is to sow the seeds in March, upon a moderately hot bed; and when the plants are come up, they are to be thinned by planting them in another hot-bed, at four inches asunder, watering, and shading them till they have taken root. They must afterwards have as much air as the season will allow, and in May they should be transplanted into a warm border, at about two feet from each other. About the middle of July the fruit will appear, when they require watering to enlarge the eggs, which ripen about the end of August.*

It is not exactly known at what period this plant was first cultivated in England, but certainly it was previous to 1596, as

* Miller.

Gerard says, in the first edition of his Herbal,

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This plant groweth in Egypt almost euerywhere, in sandie fieldes, euen of itselfe, bringing foorth fruite of the bigness of a great cucumber. We have had the same in our London gardens, where it hath borne flowers, but the winter approaching before the time of ripening, it perished; notwithstanding it came to beare fruite of the bigness of a goose egge, one extraordinarie temperate yeere, as I did see in the garden of a worshipfull merchant, Master Haruie, in Lime-street, but neuer to full ripeness." "It is better," continues this author, to haue this plante in the garden, for your pleasure, and the rarenesse thereof, than for any virtue or good qualities yet known. I rather wish Englishmen to content themselues with the meate and sauce of our own countrey, than with fruite and sauce eaten with such perill: for, doubtless, these apples have a mischeeuous quality; the use thereof is vtterly to be forsaken."

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With this caution, we cannot be surprised that the Melongena should have been in our gardens for two hundred and twenty years without reaching our tables.

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FENNEL.-FENICULUM.

Natural order, Umbellata. A genus of the Pentandria Digynia class. Linnæus has joined this genus to Anethum or Dill.

"SYLVANUS Comes with rustic honours crown'd, Fennel and lilies do his brows surround."

VIRGIL.

Foeniculum, Mapalpav, seems to be derived from fænum, hay; because, when withered and dried like hay, it was formerly preserved in like manner against winter. Others think it was so called because when sown it returns the seed magno cum fœnore, with vast inMarathrum, Mápalgov, is by some derived from pagaivouai, to wither, because, when dry and withered, it was much used in seasoning a great variety of things.

terest.

The French writers on herbs state, that this plant was originally brought from Syria; but the English botanists consider it a native of this country.

It seems fond of the sea side, and is found growing in a natural state at Feversham in Kent. It may also be seen growing wild in great abundance on the banks of the river Adur, near the Sussex Pad, between Brighton and Worthing: this wild fennel is precisely the same as that of the garden. The sweet fennel, Faniculum dulce, probably is the kind alluded to by the naturalists of France as coming from Syria and the Azores this variety soon degenerates in our soil into the common fennel, which justifies the supposition, that the common fennel may not be an aboriginal of England, but that it is more probably changed from the seed anciently sown in this country.

The Italians consider the sweet kind of fennel to be a native of the Azores islands. It has long been cultivated in Italy as a salad herb, under the title of Finochia; but the English in general have not yet acquired a relish for it; although it eats very tender and crisp, when earthed up as celery, which should be done at least fourteen days before it is used.

We procure the seed from Italy, which should be done annually. The first crop