VEGETABLE HISTORY.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 207, 18 January 1872, Page 7

VEGETABLE HISTORY.

BY JOSH BILLINGS.

The strawberry iz one ov natnr's, sweet pets. ■ She makes them worth fifty cents, the first she makes, and never allows them to be sold at a mean price. The culler ov the strawberry is like the settin' sun under a thin cloud, with a delicate dash of ov the rain bo in it ; its fragrance iz like the breath ov a baby, when it first begins tew eat winter green lossingers ; its flavour iz like the nectar which an old-fashioned goddess used tew leave in the bottom of her tumbler when Jupiter stood treat on mount ida.

Ther iz many breeds of this delightful vegetable, but not a mean one in the whole lot.

I think I have stole them, laying around loose, without any pedigree, in somebodys tall grass, when I was a lazy school boy , that eat dreadful easy without any white sugar on them, and even a bug occasionally mixed with them in the hurry of the moment. Cherrys ar.e good, but they are too much like sucking a marble, with a handle tew it. Peaches are good if yu don't get enny ov the pin feathers into yure lips. Water-melons will suit ennybody who iz satisfied with half sweattened drink; but the man that can eat stra'wberrys, besprinkled with crushed sugar and bespattered with sweet kream (at sumboddy else's expense), and not lay hiz hand on hiz stummuk and thank the author ov strawberrys and stuininuks, and. the phellow who pays for the strawberrys, iz a man with a worn-out conscience — a man whose mouth tastes like a hole in the ground, that don't kare what goes down it.

Kokernuts grow up in tho air, in a hot climate way over the ocean, about 80 feet from the gronud— on top ov a tree.

They are generally picked up by the monkeys in the naborhood, who throw them at the natives in exchange for the stones the natives heave at the monkeys. They grow az anegro's head duz, with a good deal ov skulls tow them. A kokernut after it has been skalpt, resembles an old ten-pin ball, only a little more round one way than tuther.

On the end of the nut towards you iz 2 eyes, fast asleep. The kokeruut iz opened bi breaking the skull, and this brings 'ein tew their milk.

The milk in the kokernut has never been explained yet — and the reason iz bekause nobody haz ever ased me tew do it.

Az an ai'tikle ov diet, koker iz about on a level with the french raw turuip, and iz az hard to digest as one ov Sekretary Seward's letters ov State.

Biled koker might possibly be good if it warn't a groat deal better when it was raw ; and raw kokernuts iz only good for children and gray hounds tew eat, whose stuintnuks are like a nutmeg grater. The only good thing about this foreign nut is its skull ; they can be cut into 2, and made into kups, and i must confess they do look kind, when laid on a clean flat stone bi the side ov a meadow spring, but i kant drink out ov them miself, without thinking that if they had not been cut in 2, what a kapital thing they would be tew build a young darkey tow. But this only a foolish notion ov mine, and pi'obably couldn't be did ennyhow.