Basil is not now used as extensively in cooking as formerly. Its native haunts are India and Persia, although since it yields gracefully to culture, it is to be found in many old-fashioned kitchen gardens. Its aromatic properties are similar to those of other garden herbs. [Illustration: Basil.] Chervil is an umbelliferous annual possessing aromatic leaves and somewhat resembling parsley in flavor. It is used in Europe as a pot-herb for soups and stews, but is chiefly known in America as one of the obsolete delicacies which deserve to be still popular. The root, which is fleshy and fusiform in shape, is cooked and eaten by the people of southern Europe. Celery is a veritable plebeian, originally growing wild in the ditches and fens of Europe, a coarse, offensive and poisonous vegetable. Few plants are so susceptible to the influences of cultivation and it is difficult to recognize its unaristocratic prototype in the tender, white and aromatic stalks of the garden product. It belongs to the parsley family and every portion is useful to the cook, from the daintily curled tops which may be used for both flavor and garnish, the stalks which may be eaten plain, dressed raw in salad or cooked, to the seeds, the flavor of which makes even the poorest of soups relishable. The seeds are now commonly ground for the making of “celery salt” or “celery pepper,” as the same product is variously called. A variety of celery, called _celeriac_, is cultivated in certain European countries, notably Germany, the root only, which is large and fleshy, being eaten. The famous “wild celery” of Chesapeake Bay is simply “eelgrass,” an aquatic plant which bears no relationship whatever to the umbelliferæ, of which order celery is a species. Fennel is an umbelliferous plant, native to portions of temperate Europe and Asia, especially Portugal. The fruits possess an aromatic flavor while the tender shoots are used for salad. The plant and its culinary value was well known to the Romans, and it is to-day cultivated in both Europe and America. The fruits of the European fennel are used in the making of an aromatic drink, while in America the plant is chiefly cultivated for its leaves. It has been said that fennel is to fish what mint is to lamb, and in certain of the southern states mackerel is considered of too strong a flavor to be eaten unless cooked with fennel. The fennel thus used grows wild, the green leaves being tied in bunches and boiled with the fish.