"Besides the melons and peaches and geraniums," continued the garrulous customer, "for all of which we have to thank productive Persia, water cress comes from her valleys and brooks and she taught the world how to grow and head lettuce. However, the Roman gourmands, who adopted both these salads, ate green peas and string beans that their gardeners found growing in France and South Germany, and cucumbers were as popular with them as with the Jews and Egyptians. "To Arabia honor is due for the burr artichoke. They ate it for liver difficulties--and, as a matter of fact, there is no vegetable so good for men and women who lead a sedentary life, just as carrots, that grew first in Belgium, are an admirable tonic for the complexion, spinach for the blood, potatoes for the hair, and celery for the nerves. Rhubarb, they say, was never known until the fifteenth century, when the Russians found it on the banks of the Volga, and, if you will believe it, the only European people who appreciate the eggplant as we do are the Turks. North Africa first produced this vegetable; in France it is eaten raw often as not and in obstinate England they use it for decoration. However, the potato had to make a desperate struggle for popularity and for nearly a century, after it was imported and grown in Europe nobody could be persuaded to touch it. Finally Parmentier gave it a boom that in two centuries has not in the least diminished, and twice this little tuber has saved Europe from what promised to be a cruel famine." Whereupon the customer hurried off down the street, leaving the green-grocer staring at his stock of truck with a refreshing expression of pride and interest. BIRDS AND FARMERS. If it were customary, says a contemporary, to list such matters after the manner of stock reports, the pages of the daily papers in these days, suggestive of approaching spring, would contain two quotations something like these: "Millinery active," "Audubons aggressive."