The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 546, May 12, 1832 by Various
page 25 of 50 (50%)
page 25 of 50 (50%)
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expensive works, with a host of annotations from the journals of recent
travellers and other volumes which bear upon the main subject. This part of the series, describing vegetable substances used for the food of man, is executed with considerable minuteness. A Pythagorean would gloat over its accuracy, and a vegetable diet man would become inflated with its success in establishing his eccentricities. The contents are the Corn-plants, Esculent Roots, Herbs, Spices, Tea, Coffee, &c. &c. In such a multiplicity of facts as the history of these plants must necessarily include, some misstatements may be expected. For example, the opinion that succory is superior to coffee, though supported by Drs. Howison and Duncan, is not entitled to notice. All over the continent, succory, or _chicorée_, is used to _adulterate_ coffee, notwithstanding which a few scheming persons have attempted to introduce it in this country as an improvement, by selling it at four times its worth. Why say "it is sometimes considered superior to the exotic berry," and in the same page, "it is not likely to gain much esteem, where economy is not the consideration." We looked in vain for mention of the President of the Horticultural Society under Celery; though we never eat a fine head of this delicious vegetable without grateful recollection of Mr. T.A. Knight. All preachment of the economy of the Potato is judiciously omitted, though we fear to the displeasure of Sir John Sinclair; nor is there more space devoted to this overpraised root than it deserves. Truffles are not only used "like mushrooms," but for stuffing game and poultry, especially in France: who does not remember the _perdrixaux truffes_, of the Parisian _carte_. The chapter on coffee, cacao, tea, and sugar, is brief but entertaining. We may observe, by the way, that one of the obstacles to the profitable cultivation of tea in this country is our ignorance of the modes of drying, &c. as practised in China. |
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