361 
~ 
asserts that not more than two generations back potatoes 
were seldom used after harvest. 
‘In 1663 Mr. Boyle exhibited some specimens to the 
Royal Society of London, and read before that body a letter 
from his gardener at Youghal (the cradle of the potato), in 
which he describes this esculent as ‘ very good to pickle for 
winter salads, and also to preserve. They are to be gathered 
in September, before the frost doth take them;’ and, after 
describing the best mode of culture, he continues—‘I could 
speak in the praise of the root, what a good and profitable 
thing it is, and might be to a commonwealth, could it generally 
be experienced, as the inhabitants of your town can manifest 
the truth of it.’ One would think from this passage that the 
potato had not then become an article of common food amongst 
the Irish, beyond the locality where it was first cultivated. 
Sir William Petty, in his ‘ Political Anatomy of Ireland,’ 
written in 1672, although not published until 1691, enumerates 
among the articles of food, ‘ potatoes from August till May ; 
muscles, cockles, and oysters near the sea; eggs, and butter 
made very rancid by keeping in bogs;’ and in another place 
he asserts—‘ that six out of every eight of all the Irish feed 
chiefly upon milk and potatoes.’ 
‘Certainly the present great historian of England has 
ample authority for the statement that the potato was cul- 
tivated in Ireland to such an extent as to influence the cha- 
racter and feelings of the people, so early as 1689; for, in ad- 
dition to those authorities already referred to, it is stated in 
Durfey’s ‘Irish Hudibras,’ published in the May of that 
year, and in which the esculent is frequently referred to, that 
after the arrival of William III., the natives are said to have 
been prevented enjoying their ‘ Banni-clabber [thick milk] 
and pottados.’ John Dunton, likewise, in his ‘ Conversation 
in Ireland,’ published in 1699, describes the Irish cabin in his 
day as having behind it ‘the garden, a piece of ground, some- 
times of half an acre or an acre, and in this is the turf-stack, 
