The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-01-18
 VEGETABLE SMALL TALK.

Radishes Grew First in China, and
 Stringed Beans in France.
 How many housekeepers picking
 over the vegetables on the stall know
 anything about them?" asked con
 templative customer of friend, as he
 watched his green grocer fill a small
 measure with potatoes.
 Lots of them," promptly replied the other marketer. Why, here are the potatoes in my hand, for instance. They are native American. I guess Sir
 Walter Raleigh introduced them to Flu rope.
 | T guess he never ate one, for in his day they were not considered fit to eat. They went to Europe from the hills of | South America, and a strange matter of fact, when you come to think of 1t, is that in the United States. where, bar ring a few sections, vegetables grow in greater abundance and beauty than any cther part of the world. none save maize and the ground artichokes are native products
 "Nonsense!" ejaculated the amazed Yankee.
 No nonsense about it." continued the contempative customer" Europe, Asia, Africa and South America are all more richly endowed than we. l used to think the watermelon was ours, but bless you! the North African tribes grew the big, juicy fellows and gave us our first seeds. As to the muslsmelon, 1t is vegetable of such ancient lineage that, like the cabbage and lettuce, mo- body knows just who were their first wild progenitors The melon, at any rate, came out of Persia as a developed table delicacy, while the Adam of the cabbage family is agreed by botanists to have flourished way back there in Central Asia, where they say the Cau casian race came from. The Romans ate cabbage salad, and. according to count there are nearly as many varie- ties of this sturdy old green goods as there are different races of men.
 There is another Roman delicacy," continued the customer, pointing to box of beets. They do say that the Greek philosophers thought dish of boiled beets served up with salt and oil, a great aid to mental exercise. For my part, though I don't know a vegetable that should be prCuder of it's family history than the radish, Radishes came from China, but a scientific journal the other day announced the discovery, from a translation of Egyptian hiero- glyphcs that Pharaoh fed his pyramid builders on radishes. He even went so far as to spend nineteen hundred silver talents in order to regale his masons with the crisp and spicy root. Again, if f,,I1, you will be sure to come across the an- nouncement that in Egypt the children of Israel ate melons, beets onions and garlic, and evidently, in travelling through the wilderness. Moses had a great deal of difficulty in persuading them to cease yearning after these Egyptian dainties."
 "Besides the melons and peaches and geraniums, continued the garrulous customer, flor all of which we have to thank productive Persia, watercress comes from her valleys and brooks and she taught the world how to grow and head lettuce However the Roman commands who adopted both these sal ads ate green peas and stringed beans that their gardeners found growing in France and South Germany, and cu- cumbers were as popular with them as with the Jews and Egyptians.
 ''To Arabia honor is due for the burr artichoke. They ate it for liver diffi- as matter of fact, there is no vebetable so good for men and women who lead a sedentary life, just as carrots. that grew first in Belgium, are an admirable tonic for the complex ion, spinach for the blood, potatoes for the hair and celery for the nerves they say, was never known until the fifteenth century, when the Russians found 1t on the banks of the Volga, and if you will believe it, the