The Chicory is one of our native weeds; it grows in the calcareous or sandy soils of England, has a large pale blue flower and a white parsniplike tap root, which grows of good size when the plant is cultivated. This root has a bitter juice. It is cultivated in Surrey, Bedfordshire and Yorkshire, and in Germany, Belgium and France.

The root is dug up before the plant flowers; it is washed, sliced, dried and roasted till it is of a chocolate colour. Two pounds of lard are roasted with each cwt. It makes in water a sweetish-bitter beverage, not unwholesome.

The way to detect the unauthorized mixture of chicory with coffee is to put the powder in cold water, which (if there is chicory with it) it will colour more or less according to the quantity. Pure coffee will not colour cold water.

Chicory makes an excellent winter salad. For this purpose it is taken up in October or November, and stacked in cellars with alternate layers of sand, so that the crowns of the plants just show along the ridge. If the frost be carefully excluded the roots will here soon send forth a profusion of tender, succulent leaves, which, if kept from the light, will be quite blanched.