.?^^S^«! 



thoy had the most undoubted right. Turn to any work of general information that we 

 like, the attempt \>* con tautly made to deprive Ireland of tlie glory of giving the potato 

 to Europe — on its introduction from "Old Virginny," in 15S4, by Sir Walter Raleigh — 

 because the name given it by the Spaniards, " battata," is a corruption of some name 

 given it by the inhabitants of Guito ; and because we directly derive our name " potato '» 

 from that which was applied to a root grown previously in the gardens of Spain and 

 Portugal. Now this is all erroneous. It was a convolvulus — the Spanish sweet potato — 

 which in the beginning of the sixteenth century was introduced into Spain, and cultivated 

 under the Indian name of battata. Old Gerrard, our famous English herbalist, knew 

 this very we!l, and sets us all right. In 1590 he describes the potato (convolvulus) roots 

 as " common and ordinary meat among Spaniards, Italians, and many other nations ; 

 which," says he, " no doubt are of mightie nourishing parts, and so strengthen and com- 

 fort nature ; whose nutriment is, as it were, a mean between flesh and fruit, though 

 somewhat windy ; but being roasted in the embers, they do lose much of their windiness^ 

 especially being eaten sopped in wine. Of these roots may be made conserves, no less 

 toothsome, wholesome, and daintie than of the flesh of quinces ; and likewise those com. 

 fortable and delicate meates called in shops morcelli, plancentuloe, and divers others such 

 like. These roots may serve as a ground whereon the cunning confectioner or sugar- 

 baker may worke and frame many comfortable and delicate conserves and restorative 

 sweetmeats." Even so, Shakespeare — who, by-the-bye, has been noted as ignoring 

 llaleigh and all his works, and never once mentions tobacco, although Ben Jonson often 

 does — makes FalstaflF, in allusion to the sweet convolvulus, say, in the " Merry "Wives of 

 "Windsor " — 



"Let it rain potatoes, and hail kissing comfits;" 



and it is evident that the connection of the meteorological phenomena thus invoked would 

 be unintelligible with reference to the potato ; whilst it is obvious enough, from what 

 Gerrard says, that kissing-comfits and all such sweets were made of the Spanish potato. 

 Evelyn was urged by the Koyal Society to treat of their cultivation in his " Sylva," pub- 

 lished under its direction ; and it is not a little remarkable, in connection with what we 

 are about to mention respecting the new Chinese potato, the probable successor of the 

 Virginian, that he recommended exactly the course which is not found advantageous in 

 the case of the latter, but is nevertheless indicated as the means of rendering the new 

 root most productive, namely, to leave the parent plants in the same spot of ground from 

 year to year, covered up with litter to shield them from the winter's frost, and only ab- 

 stracting a few tubers for use in the autumn. 



Although the calamity which has descended on the heads of these potato-eating mil- 

 lions, by the failure of the root of their dependence, has superadded to the picture a 

 strange phasis of alteration, it would be no product of ordinary pretensions by which we 

 could ever expect to see it superceded. Yet it would be a still greater blessing to Ireland, 

 if a substitute less incident to this alarming casualty could be introduced ; for the latest 

 accounts of the 400,000 annual outpourings of the exodus to New York is couched in 

 the prayer of a Transatlantic Hibernian to the Times, like that of the French paterfami- 

 lias on the increase of his olive branches, " to put a stop to dis," since sickness and des- 

 titution threaten their annihilation, even in the land of refuge. Well, the new Chinese 

 potato, or Dioscorea batatas, is alleged to be the substitute required. 



