524 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1925 



into Europe, for lie arrived at Plymouth the 9th of September, 

 1588, and more than eij^ht months before this, on January 26, 1588, 

 Charles de L'Ecluse, or Carolus Clusius, at that time in charge of 

 the botanical gardens of Rudolph II, at Vienna, received from 

 Philippe de Sivry, Prefect of Mons in the Belgian province of Hai- 

 nault, two potato tubers which he planted in his garden. These had 

 been sent to de Sivry by an attache of the papal legation, who had 

 them from Italy, where they had been in cultivation since about 

 1585. The j^ear following de Sivry sent to Clusius an excellent col- 

 ored drawing, now in the Plantin-lSIoretus Museum at Antwerp, 

 which bears the following inscription in the handwritmg of Clusius : 



Taratoufli a Philippo de Sivry acceptum Viciinao 2fi jannurii 158S. — Papas 

 Peruanum Petri Ciecae. 



This drawing is reproduced in the accompanying illustration (pi. 

 9). Its accuracy is shown by comparing it with plate 10, an original 

 photograph of a specimen in the economic herbarium of the United 

 States Department of Agriculture, propagated from a tuber collected 

 at Oruro, Bolivia, by Mr. W. F. Wight (No. 415). 



At the time the drawing was made an interest in the ])otato had 

 been awakened by the appearance of Acosta's account of the New 

 World, published first at Salamanca in Latin in 1588-89, and the 

 following year at Seville in Spanish, under the title Historia Natural 

 y Moral de las Indias. Acosta dedicated his work to " La Serenis- 

 sima Infanta, Doiia Isabel Clara Eugenia de Austria." 



It seems strange that a nourishing and easily cultivated food 

 staple like the potato, to whose excellence both Cieza and Acosta had 

 called attention, shoidd have to wait so long for recognition. Other 

 cultivated plants of the New World, like maize, beans, and tobacco, 

 became Avidely spread in a remarkably short time after the discovery 

 of America. 



The exact date of its introduction into Europe is not known. It 

 was, however, undoubtedly carried thither from Peru as a curious 

 food of the New World, possibly by the same Spaniards who, accord- 

 ing to Cieza, returned to Spain after having grown rich by carrying 

 chuiio to the mines of Potosi. 



Owing to Clusius' delay in publishing his data, he was anticipated 

 by Gerard, who was indebted to him for information regarding the 

 potato, as he himself states in his Herbal. It was not Gerard who 

 gave to the potato its accepted botanical name, but Kaspar Bauhin, 

 who, in 1596, described it accurately under the very appropriate 

 name, Solanum tuherosuni, which Linnaeus adopted.-^ 



Like Clusius, Bauhin identified it with the papas of Spanish 

 America. His illustration was made from a specimen grown in the 



" See Kaspar Bauliin, Pbytopinax, seu enuuuralio plantaium. 302. Basil. 1596. 



