Natural history in Shakespeare's time : being extracts illustrative of the subject as he knew it / Made by H. W. Seager, M. B., &c. Also pictures thereunto belonging.

  • Seager, H. W. (Herbert West), 1848-
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural history in Shakespeare's time : being extracts illustrative of the subject as he knew it / Made by H. W. Seager, M. B., &c. Also pictures thereunto belonging. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    groweth by Hackney, and those that are brought to Cheap- side Market from that village are the best that ever I tasted. Turnips flower and seed the second year after they are sown ; for those which flower the same year that they are sown are a degenerate kind, called in Cheshire about the Namptwitch \_i.e., Nantwich] Mad Neeps—of their evil quality in causing frenzy and giddiness of the brain for a season. The root is many times eaten raw, especially of the poor people in Wales, but most commonly boiled or roasted or baked ; the young and tender shoots or springs of turnips at their first coming forth of the ground boiled and eaten as a salad. Geran/'s Herbal, s.v. With us the yellow, which comes from Denmark, is preferred ; by others, the red Bohemian. The stalks of the common Turnip, when first beginning to bud, being boiled, eat like asparagus. ^,,,/^,^^^ Acetaria, § 79. The best husbandmen would have the seedsmen [of Turnips or rapes] to be naked when he sows them, and in sowing to protest, that this which he doth is for himself and his neighbours. Mark how many days old the moon was when the first snow fell the winter next before,—for if a man do sow rapes or Turnips within the foresaid com- pass of that time, the moon being so many days old, they will come to be wondrous great, and increase exceedingly, Holland's Plhiy, bk. xviii. ch, xiii. The Turnip or navew groweth sometimes to thirty or forty pound weight. The best way of use is accounted, first to boil them, and, the water being poured out, then to boil them again with fat beef, adding to them some pepper. Hart, Diet of the Diseased, bk. i. ch. xiii. Turquoise. Merchant of Venice, iii. i, 126. Turquoise is a white yellow stone, and hath that name of the country of Turkey, there it is bred. This stone keepeth and saveth the sight, and breedeth gladness and comfort. Barthokmczv {BcrtMct), bk. xvi. § 97.