362 
their corn, perhaps two or three hundred sheaves of oats, 
and as much peas; the rest of the ground is full of their 
dearly-beloved potatoes, and a few cabbages.’ And again, 
describing the habits of the people generally from Galway to 
Kilkenny, he says, ‘ Bonny-Clabber and Mulahaan, alias sowre 
milk and choak-cheese, with a dish of potatoes boiled, is their 
general entertainment; also in the ‘keens’ of that day, allusion 
is made to the ‘pigs and potato garden.’ Moreover, John 
Haughton, who published his ‘ Husbandry and Trade Im- 
proved’ in 1699, when describing the growth of the potato in 
Ireland, says, it has ‘thrived very well and to good purpose, for 
in their succeeding wars, when all the corn above ground was 
destroyed, this supported them; for the soldiers, unless they 
had dug up all the ground where they grew, and almost sifted 
it, could not extirpate them.’ 
‘‘As experience has proved the potato to be one of 
the most fickle of vegetables cultivated to the same extent, 
the most likely to suffer from atmospheric vicissitudes, and 
the most liable to disease—one would think that if it had 
been cultivated in Ireland to such an extent as to constitute 
the most material portion of the food of the people, its failures 
would have been noticed in history, contemporaneously with 
those other losses of food which have been recorded. It is 
possible, however, that in the earlier years of its general intro- 
duction, this crop was not so liable to disease as in later times. 
In 1725, the use of the potato was so general (at least in 
parts of the country) as to form nearly the whole winter 
food of the poor (see Primate Boulter’s Letters). 
«<The first great destruction of the potato crop occurred 
in the winter of 1739-40, and was attributed to the early, 
very severe, and long-continued frost of that period. There 
had been a very wet summer and autumn in 1739; and al- 
though the frost, no doubt, was one of the chief causes of its 
destruction, I am inclined to think that the potato failures in 
1739, °40, and °41, were not altogether attributable to the 
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