142 Amej'ican Horticuliural Society. 



It is but common prudence when a storm threatens, to be ready to cast 

 an anchor to windward with the first sight of the wreclc-making breakers. 



Desiring to cover new ground only, at this time, I refer the interested to 

 former papers on file m the records of the California Academy of Sciences 

 in San Francisco, and to other papers and reports published from time to 

 time in California, and other journals during the last two years. In those 

 papers much that we have gleaned of the early history, migrations, cultiva- 

 tion, and obstacles to the introduction of this so-called "new root from 

 America" was compiled. It was shown that this most important esculent, 

 though discovered and carried into Europe 322 years ago (1563), yet was 

 proudly ignored by the nobility as too vulgar for their appetites, kicked and 

 cuffed about by the common people as too earthy for their food, lampooned 

 by the scribblers as a worthless American fraud, interdicted by municipal 

 authorities as injurious, cursed by the clergy as poisonous, only tardily and 

 stealthily planted by a few determined spirits from fresh importations dur- 

 ing over 230 years, not coming into general use until the beginning of the 

 present century — only eighty-five years ago! 



The importance of the potato is therein stated as America's best gift to 

 mankind, being next in rank to wheat among food jjlants of the whole 

 world, corn being third, while potatoes exceed both in productiveness, the 

 yield per Mcre, in weight, being thirty times greater than wheat and twelve 

 times greater than corn. 



Its pliability, its development under cultivation, has been disctissed as ex- 

 ceeding that of any known esculent; one variety or another flourishing un- 

 der wide extremes of latitude and diverse degrees of altitude — growing, in 

 fact, wherever man can live. 



Its suspicious fellowship in the mostly poisonous family of Solanaceous 

 plants has been presented, and the conditicms given where, by exposure of 

 the tubers to sunlight or hot winds, the potato is extremely injurious, indeed 

 even deadly poisonous; but other well-known edible plants of this same or- 

 der are enumerated, notably the tomato, the egg-plant, the physalis, or 

 ground cherry, and others. In this connection, the tobacco plant may be al- 

 li;ded to as a rank poison, for which man has acquired a most singular and 

 disagreeable habit. 



The various qualities and uses of the potato as ordinary food, prepared in 

 several ways, its service as an antiscorbutic in hospitals, prisons and on ship- 

 board, its large stores of starch which are readily converted into sugar, its 

 dextrine, its intoxicating prodtict under distillation, etc., etc., have been 

 shown and their relative importance illustrated. 



Its value as pre-eminently the poor man's bread is abundantly proved, for 

 it gives fair crops on poor lands, or on the most limited areas. On several 

 occasions the potato has averted famine over wide regions of the earth. In 

 this connection it is seen that certain districts have been enabled to sustain 

 twice the population they otherwise could, and hence over-crowding, and 

 consequent si;ffering, degradation or forced emigration have been prevented. 



