On the sea-coasts of Great Britain and other countries of western Europe, from Norway around to the northern shores of the Mediterranean (where it is chiefly at home) grows a small biennial plant, looking somewhat like a mustard or half-grown cabbage. This is the wild cabbage, _Brassica oleracea_, from which our cultivated cabbages originated. It is entirely destitute of a head, but has rather succulent stems and leaves, and has been used more or less for food from the earliest historic times. The cultivated plants which most resemble this wild species, are our different sorts of kale. In fact this wild plant is the original, not only of our headed cabbage in its different varieties, but also of all forms of kale, the kohl-rabi, brussels-sprouts, broccolis and cauliflowers. No more wonderful example than this exists of the changes produced in a wild plant by cultivation. Just when the improvement of the wild cabbage began is unknown, probably at least 4000 years ago. Of the cultivated forms of this species Theophrastus distinguished three, Pliny, six; Tournefort, twenty; and De Candolle, in 1821, more than thirty. For a long time this plant was used for food in a slightly improved state before heads of any kind were developed. Sturtevant, quotes Oliver de Serres, as saying that, "White cabbages came from the north, and the art of making them head was unknown in the time of Charlemagne." He adds that the first unmistakable reference to our headed cabbage that he finds is by Rullius, who in 1536 mentions globular heads, a foot and a half in diameter. It was probably about this time that the cauliflower, and several other forms of the species made their appearance. There is difference of opinion as to whether our cauliflowers or the broccolis were first to originate. London believed that the broccolis, which Miller says first came to England from Italy in 1719, were derived from the cauliflower. Phillips, in his "History of Cultivated Vegetables," said, in 1822, that the broccoli appears to be an accidental mixture of the common cabbage and the cauliflower, but of this he gives no proof. Sturtevant says: "It is certainly very curious that the early botanists did not describe or figure the broccoli. The omission is only explainable on the supposition that it was confounded with the cauliflower, just as Linnæus brought the cauliflower and the broccoli into one botanical variety." When broccolis came to England from Italy, they were at first known under the names "sprout-cauliflower," or "Italian asparagus." This, however, is not sufficient reason for believing that the broccolis are derived from the cauliflowers, as the word broccoli was, and still is, applied in Italy to the tender shoots of various kinds of cabbages and turnips.