PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 51 



• grows on cliffs and hills near the sea, and I do not 

 remember to have seen it more than two or three leagues 

 from the coast. Although it is found in mountainous 

 places, far from cultivation, it does not exist in the 

 immediate neighbourhood of the fields and gardens where 

 it is planted, excepting when a stream crosses these en- 

 closures and carries the tubers into unculti^-ated places." 

 The potato described by these two travellers had white 

 flowers, as is seen in some cultivated European varieties, 

 and like the plant formerly reared by de I'Ecluse. We 

 may assume that this is the natural colour of the species, 

 or at least one of the most common in its wild state. 



Darwin, in his voyage in the Beagle, found the potato 

 growing wild in great abundance on the sand of the 

 sea-shore, in the archipelago of Southern Chili, and 

 growing with a remarkable vigour, which may be attri- 

 buted to the damp climate. The tallest plants attained 

 to the height of four feet. The tubers were small as a 

 rule, though one of them was two inches in diameter. 

 They were watery, insipid, but with no bad taste when 

 cooked. "The plant is undoubtedly wild," says the 

 author,^ "and its specific identity has been confirmed 

 first by Henslow, and afterwards by Sir Joseph Hooker 

 in his Flora Antarctica?' 



A specimen in the herbarium collected by Claude 

 Gay, considered by Dunal to be Scktnum tuherosmn, 

 bears this inscription : " From the centre of the Cordilleras 

 of Talcagouay, and of Cauquenes, in places visited only 

 by botanists and geologists." The same author. Gay, in 

 his Flora Chilena,^ insists upon the abundance of the 

 wild potato in Chili, even among the Araucanians in the 

 mountains of Malvarco, where, he says, the soldiers of 

 Pincheira used to go and seek it for food. This evidence 

 sufficiently proves its wild state in Chili, so that I may 

 •omit other less convincing testimony — for instance, that 

 of Molina and Meyen, whose specimens from Chili have 

 not been examined. 



The climate of the coast of Chili is continued upon 



^ Journal of the Voyage, etc., edit. 1852, p. 285. 

 2 Yol. i. part 2, p. 329. ^ y^i^ ^, p^ 74, 



