118 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



will) erected a monument in his honor at Offenburg in 1854 

 <ind struck off a medal to the British Admiral as the savior of 

 (itrmany in 1916 when a big potato Crop enabled them to 

 l.iold out another year. But such honors always come by slow 

 treight. It took people a humh-ed years or more to learn 

 liiat [potatoes were good for them to eat. They fed them to 

 their pigs and cattle which, not having the prejudices of ra- ' 

 t'onal men, took to them readily. 



The Germans also fed their prisoners of war on potatoes 

 and it happened that one of them was a French chemist, 

 Parmentier, who, having been captured in 1758. was held a 

 prisoner in Hanover for five years and had to live largely on 

 fotatoes. One would have thought he w^ould have acquired 

 a distaste for them but on the contrary w'hen he was released 

 he urged his counrymen to cultivate the potato as a vegeta- 

 ble "that in Times of Necessity can be substituted for Ordi- 

 nary Food." But the French, even though starving, w'ould 

 not eat potatoes until finally Parmentier persuaded the king 

 and queen to taste some and wear a bouquet of blossoms. 

 The people, seeing that the king and queen were not poisoned, 

 consented to sample them for themselves. 



In 1728 an attempt was made to introduce potatoes into 

 Scotland, but they were denounced from the pulpit on two con- 

 tradictorv counts; that they were not mentioned in the Bible 

 and so not fit food for Christians, and that they were the for- 

 hidden fruit, the cause of Adam's fall. They were accused 

 of causing leprosy and fever. In England the effort of the 

 Eoyal Society to promote the cultivation of the potato was 

 suspected of being a conspiracy of capialists to oppress the 

 pr.or. The labor leader, William Corbett, said. "It has 

 become of late the fashion to extol the virtues of potatoes as 

 it has been to admire the writings of Milton and Shakespeare." 



