Johnson (1862) provided an extensive history of the cabbage~:The ancient Romans and Greeks cultivated three varieties (Greek legend has it that the cabbage sprung from where Zeus' sw.eat hit the ground). Cato mentioned. that it was either boiled or eaten raw. Later, Pliny reported tl1at cabbage,was going out of favour with the lower, orders, due to the quantity of oil (which was becoming more expensive) required to make it palatable (presum,ably it was eaten raw). He mentioned several varieties, one of which, 'Halmyridia', grew on the sea-shore and was: used ·as a vegetable on long voyages. . It has been suggested that:the Romans first brought the cabbage to Britain (Gates 1950a). Subsequently the Saxons cultivated it (their second month was called Sprout-kale), as did mediaeval religious orders. It was also apparently cultivated in eastern Fife, where it was so popular that the people of the area were known as 'kail-suppers'. As a commercial crop it may have been introduced by Sir Anthony Ashley of Dorset, as late as the 16th century. The cabbage was also used as a medicine. Pliny recommended gouty people to live on cabbages and the water they have been boiled in. Turner (1551) mentioned the use of cabbage as a general cure for internal disorders. Gerarde (1633) similarly chronicled its healing powers. (Saarivirta, in Virtanen (1962), has shown that one of the mustard oils of cabbage has antibiotic and fungistatic activity). Thus it would appear that the cabbage has been grown in Britain for various reasons, probably since the Roman invasion. _ The derivation of the cultivated cabbage is open to question. Schulz (1936) and Gates (1950b) held the view that the range of variation in the wild cabbage, Brassica ol~racea L. subsp. oleracea (B. sylvestris (L.) Miller) is insufficient to account for all the present-day varieties, some of which have arisen through hybddisation between B. oleracea and other .Brassica species. However, de Candolle (1824) and Bailey (1922) held the opposite viewpoint.