If the stem allows itself to be allured, why not the root? It does, in fact, yield to the blandishments of agriculture: it dilates its pivot into a flat turnip, which half emerges from the ground. This is the rutabaga, or swede, the turnip-cabbage of our northern districts. Incomparably docile under our nursing, the cabbage has given its all for our nourishment and that of our cattle: its leaves, its flowers, its buds, its stalk, its root; all that it now wants is to combine the ornamental with the useful, to smarten itself, to adorn our flowerbeds and cut a good figure on a drawing-room table. It has done this to perfection, not with its flowers, which, in their modesty, continue intractable, but with its curly and variegated leaves, which have the undulating grace of Ostrich-feathers and the rich colouring of a mixed bouquet. None who beholds it in this magnificence will recognize the near relation of the vulgar "greens" that form the basis of our cabbage-soup. The cabbage, first in order of date in our kitchen-gardens, was held in high esteem by classic antiquity, next after the bean and, later, the pea; but it goes much farther back, so far indeed that no memories of its acquisition remain. History pays but little attention to these details: it celebrates the battle-fields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the ploughed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of the kings' bastards, but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. That is the way of human folly. This silence respecting the precious plants that serve as food is most regrettable. The cabbage in particular, the venerable cabbage, that denizen of the most ancient garden-plots, would have had extremely interesting things to teach us. It is a treasure in itself, but a treasure twice exploited, first by man and next by the caterpillar of the Pieris, the common Large White Butterfly whom we all know (Pieris brassicae, Lin.). This caterpillar feeds indiscriminately on the leaves of all varieties of cabbage, however dissimilar in appearance: he nibbles with the same appetite red cabbage and broccoli, curly greens and savoy, swedes and turnip-tops, in short, all that our ingenuity, lavish of time and patience, has been able to obtain from the original plant since the most distant ages. But what did the caterpillar eat before our cabbages supplied him with copious provender? Obviously the Pieris did not wait for the advent of man and his horticultural works in order to take part in the joys of life. She lived without us and would have continued to live without us. A Butterfly's existence is not subject to ours, but rightfully independent of our aid.