Note 207-4 — Chapter I

Ritter, Erdkunde, III, 209. Thus, the French in the 13th century were acquainted with only three kinds of cabbage; in the 16th, with six, about 1651, with 12; they are now acquainted with more than 50; in the 16th century they knew only 4 kinds of sorrel; in 1651, 7; about 1574, only 4 kinds of lettuce; to-day they know over 50; under Henry II., they were acquainted with 2 or 3 kinds of melons; in the 17th century, with 7; now they are acquainted with over 40. (Roquefort, Histoire de la Vie privée des Fr., I, 179 ff.) Instead of the four kinds of pears mentioned by de Serre (1600), there were, in 1651, about 400. (I, 272.) Liebaud, 1570, knew only 19 kinds of grapes; de Serre, 41. (Roquefort, III, 29 ff.) According to the "Briefen eines Verstorbenen," IV, 390, the first kitchen-gardener in London had 435 kinds of salad, 240 of potatoes, and 261 of pease.

And so precisely in ancient times. While the earlier Greeks speak of but one οἶνος,[TN 33] even at the most sumptuous feasts (compare, however, Homer, Il. XI, 641;) and while even in the time of Demosthenes only very few kinds of wine were known (Becker, Charicles, I, 455), Pliny, H. N. XIV, 13, was acquainted with about 80. In this respect the moderns have never returned to ancient simplicity; at least the fabliau, La Bataille des Vins, introduces us to 47 kinds of French wine in the 13th century. (Compare also Wackernagel in Haupt's Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterth., VI. 261 ff., and Henderson, History of ancient and modern Wines, 1824.) The Lacedemonians, with their intentional persistence in a lower stage of civilization, used the same garment in winter and summer (Xenoph., De Rep. Laced., II, 4); while the contemporaries of Athenæos (III, 78 ff.) were acquainted with 72 kinds of bread. With what a delicate sense for good living the Romans in Caesar's time had discovered the best supply places for chickens, peacocks, cranes, thunny-fish, muraena, oysters and other shell-fish, chestnuts, dates, etc., may be seen in Gellius, N. A., VII, 16. Compare Athen., XII, 540.

In the middle age of Italy, the houses had almost always three rooms: domus (kitchen), thalamus, solarium. (Cibrario, E. P. del medio Evo, III, 45.) The manors or masters' houses built on the estates of Charlemagne had 3 and 2 rooms, sometimes only 1, and sometimes 2 rooms and 2 bedrooms. According to an old document of 895, a shed was worth 5 sols, a well-built manor 12. (Anthon, Geschichte der deutschen Landwirth., I, 249 ff., 311.) The Lex Alamanorum, tit. 92, provided that a child, in order to be considered capable[TN 34] of living, should have seen the roof and four walls of the house! See an able essay, capable of being still further developed, by E. Herrmann, in which he endeavors to explain the division of use and of labor on Darwin's hypothesis of the origin of species in the D. Vierteljahrsschrift, Januar., 1867.