At every season of the year some of the innumerable products of the vegetable world present themselves to be converted with the aid of the caster from the crude into the finished form; and more is the pity that the artists are not as numerous as the esculents. From the first tributes of the hot-bed--the lettuces, radishes, and garden-cress of early spring, and the cos, lettuces, and water-cresses of summer to the endives of autumn and corn-salad and chicory of winter, one has an abundance of material to choose from in what may be broadly designated the lettuce tribe, alone. When to these are added other esculents like celery, the tomato, cucumber, potato, beets, carrots, beans, celery-root, celery-turnip, etc., together with the manifold herbs and bulbous plants that may be utilised in connection with them, surely the roast should never be lacking in this its most harmonious _appoggiatura_, or the supper-table fail in one of its greatest attractions. The salad imparts a zest to the dinner that were otherwise unattainable. What were those most delectable of game-birds that reward the sportsman's skill--the snipe and the partridge--without it? It was rightly held by Evelyn that sallets are an essential part of the daily food of man, and that no dinner is complete without one; although those who are not confirmed devotees of the salad-bowl might possibly prove sceptical as to two forms which he specifies in "Sylva,"--"I am told that those small young _Acorns_ which we find in the Stock-doves Craws are a delicious fare, as well as those incomparable _Salads_ of young herbs taken out of the maws of Partridge at a certain season of the year, which gives them a preparation far exceeding all the art of Cookery."