77 Queer Side of T/nngs.

VEGETABLE ODDITIES.

SIRICAKS of vegetables, espect- ally of turnips, radishes, parsnips, and the like, have probably been observed from time to time by most people, though very rarcly i such

striking forms as in these

distinet and mstances. which have been recorded 1 old

‘ prints. The radish, which we give hirst, grew mn a sandy soil at Haarlem, more than two humn- dred years ago, and was painted in fac-simile by Jacob Penoy, one of whose Iriends pre- sentad the picture to Glandorp in the year 1072, This picturce was engraved by Kirby, showing the root exactly as we reproduce

it here. Nor is this the only instance in which the root of a radish has taken this particular form, as another, exactly re- sembling a human hand, with fingers and thumb complete, was possessed by Mr. Bissct, Secretary to the Birmingham Muscum, in 1802.

Our sccond illustration represents a parsnip, which also strikingly resembles a hand, but 1 a diffcrent position, as it appears to be grasping another root. This oddity was sold by a market woman in the ordinary course of business, and was passed from hani to hand as a curiosity until it came nto the possession of an engraver, who madc the drawing of it which we give.

The last of our illustrations 1s a turnip with a face, a plumed head-dress, body,

arms, and a number of intertangled legs, like those of some sca-monster, “ cnding 1n snaky twine.” This root grew in a garden in the village of Weiden, in Germany, 1n 1628, the fact being recorded in the curious columns entitled * Miscellanca Academie Naturwe.”

If any of our readers should come across any “ Vegetable Oddities 7 of this kind, we shall be pleased 1f they will send them to us for inspection, so that, if they are sufficiently curious, we may illustrate them in these pages.