CABBAGE (Brassica oleracea) 9 a plant in general cultivation for culinary purposes, and for feeding cattle. The common cabbage is said to have been in troduced into England by the Romans, but to have been little known in Scotlanci until brought by Cromwell's soldiers. The principal varieties are known to have exist at least as far back as the 16th century, but minor varieties are be ing constantly produced by selection and intercrossing. The varieties differ greatly from each other, and the ancestral wild cabbages yet admit of simple interpre tation as terms of a continuous series of simple variations. The parent is of highly vegetative character, as its habi tat and habit alike show; and placed in more favorable conditions its growth be comes luxuriant. More normally, it is carried back into the stem, and this may accordingly become swollen and turnip like, in which case we have the kohl rabi. The vegetative overplus may, how ever, also be applied to the formation of buds, which accordingly develop with peculiar exuberance, giving us Brussels sprouts. The most evolved and final variety is the cauliflower, in which the vegetative surplus becomes poured into the flowering head, of which the flower ing is more or less checked; the in florescence becoming a dense corymb instead of an open panicle, and the majority of the flowers aborting, so as to become incapable of producing seed. Let a specially vegetative cabbage repeat the excessive development of its leaf parenchyma, and we have the wrinkled and blistered savoy, of which the hardy constitution, but comparative coarseness, becomes also more intelligible. Again a specially vegetative cauliflower gives us an easily grown and hardy winter variety, Broccoli, from which, and not from the ordinary cauliflower, a sprout ing variety arises in turn.
The cabbage is biennial, consequently the main crop must be sown the autumn previous to that in which it is to be reaped. Field cabbages and the drum head varieties that are used in gardens, being late in character, may be sown in July, or from the third week of that month to the second week of August.
But the smaller and early sorts used in gardens should not be sown before the first week of August, nor later than the second week of that month. If the plants are reared earlier, they are apt to run to seed the following spring; and if, on the other hand, they are reared later, they will not acquire strength enough to withstand the cold of winter before it comes upon them. For successive crops to be used in the shape of young summer cabbages, one or two sowings may be made from the beginning of March to the beginning of April. Autumn-sown plants may be planted out in rows per manently as soon as they are strong enough. Additional plantations from the same sowing may be made in spring, to be followed by others, made at in tervals, up till July, from spring-sown plants. Thus a close succession of usable cabbage may be obtained the year round. In the northern parts of the United States, cabbages for the early summer market are sown about September, kept under glass or frames during winter, and planted out in spring. For later markets, the seed is sown in beds as early as possible in spring (about March), and transplanted later. Cab bages are sometimes preserved for winter by inverting them and burying them in the ground. Cabbage coleworts may be obtained from any good early variety of cabbage. They are simply cabbages which are not permitted to form hearts, but are used while the leaves are yet green and the hearts more or less open. Three sowings should be made for the rearing of these: the first about the middle of June, the second about the same time in July, and the third about the last week of the latter month, or the first week of August. These sow ings will provide crops of green cabbages from October till March or April, if the winter is not destructive, after which they begin to run to seed.