INTRODUCTION.
At their savory dinner set Herbs and other country messes, Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses.
-- _Milton._ Our taste for salads--and in their simplest form who is not fond of salads ?--is an inheritance from classic times and Eastern lands.

In the hot climates of the Orient, cucumbers and melons were classed among earth's choicest productions; and a resort ever grateful in the heat of the day was "a lodge in a garden of cucumbers." At the Passover the Hebrews ate lettuce, camomile, dandelion and mint,--the "bitter herbs" of the Paschal feast,--combined with oil and vinegar.

Of the Greeks, the rich were fond of the lettuces of Smyrna, which appeared on their tables at the close of the repast.

In this respect the Romans, at first, imitated the Greeks, but later came to serve lettuce with eggs as a first course and to excite the appetite.
The ancient physicians valued lettuce for its narcotic virtue, and, on account of this property, Galen, the celebrated Greek physician, called it "the philosopher's or wise man's herb." The older historians make frequent mention of salad plants and salads.
In the biblical narrative Moses wrote: "And the children of Israel wept again and said, We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick." In his second Eclogue, Virgil represents a rustic maid, Thestylis, preparing for the reapers a salad called _moretum_.

He wrote, also, a poem bearing this title, in which he describes the composition and preparation of the dish.
A modern authority says, "Salads refresh without exciting and make people younger." Whether this be strictly true or not may be an open question, but certainly in the assertion a grain of truth is visible; for it is a well-known fact that "salad plants are better tonics and blood purifiers than druggists' compounds." There is, also, an old proverb: "Eat onions in May, and all the year after physicians may play." What is health but youth?
Vegetables, fish and meats, "left over,"-- all may be transformed, by artistic treatment, into salads delectable to the eye and taste.
Potatoes are subject to endless combinations.