ALIMENT. Marginal note, for n° 438, &c. read 440—442.
A considerable change has now taken place in the vegetables made use of as food by the ancients, by substituting, instead of what were then used, a number of more bland, agreeable, and nutritive juices. The acorns and nuts of the primitive times have given way to a variety of sweeter farinaceous seeds and roots. To the malvaceous tribe of plants so much used by the Greeks and Romans, hath succeeded the more grateful spinach; and to the blite, the garden orach. The rough borage is supplanted by the acseent sorrel; and asparagus has banished a number of roots recorded by the Roman writers under the name of bulbs; but Linnaeus is of opinion, that the parsnip has undeservedly usurped the place of the skirret. The bean of the ancients, improperly so called, being the roots, as well as other parts of the nymphaea nelumbo, or Indian water-lily, is superseded by the kidney-bean. The garden rocket, eaten with, and as an antidote against the chilling qualities of the lettuce, is banished by the more agreeable cress and tarragon; the apium by the meliorated celery; the pompion, and others of the cucurbitaceous tribe, by the melon; and the sumach berries, by the fragrant nutmeg. The silphium, or succus Cyrenaicus, which the Romans purchased from Persia and India at a great price, and is thought by some to have been the asafetida of the present time, is no longer used in preference to the alliaceous tribe.
To turn from the vegetable to some of the animal substitutes, we may mention the carp among fishes, as having excluded a great number held in high estimation among the Romans. The change of oil for butter; of honey for sugar; of mulla, or liquors made of wine, water, and honey, for the wines of modern times; and that of the ancient zythus for the present improved malt liquors; not to mention also the colida of the Roman taverns, analogous to our tea and coffee.