2 The Microscope. 



our lives. If we have poor food we are not well; if we have good 

 food, properly cooked, then our lives run smoothly and in health. 

 The evils of strong drink are great, but the evils of bad cooking and 

 ill- selected food are greater. It is one of the curious things of our 

 ethics that the really most important matters of our households are 

 too often entrusted to the lowest intelligences we meet with in 

 society, that when we hire cooks we trust our lives and health to 

 persons who can neither read nor write (in many cases) and who do 

 not have any clear idea of what they are about, save to get all the 

 money they can, break all the crockery, and dress in what finery they 

 can of a Sunday. 



Would that the time spent by the queens of our parlors on crazy 

 quilts, screens and fancy needle work (well enough in their place) 

 was given to the solution of the beautiful problems connected with 

 food that are so vitally important and constantly pressing on our 

 attention every time we eat. 



MORPHOLOGY OF THE POTATO. UNCOOKED. 



By potatoes we mean (1) the tubers of the solatium tuberosum, 

 the commonly called Irish or white potato — a native of South Amer- 

 ica, and (2) the sweet potato, a native of the Malaga Peninsula, 

 botatas edulis, or the convolvulus batatas of Linnaeus. 



If we take (1 ) a tuber which has a covering (good enough to be 

 patented) of an epidermis, made up of cork cells, which are elastic, 

 protective and capable of reproduction to a certain extent, when 

 mutilated or destroyed; this skin is made up of layers superimposed 

 in oblong right-angled cells, much like common brick- work, and 

 unlike the cork cells of the commcMi bottle cork (quercus suber). In 

 form the potato skin is an admirable covering and perfectly 

 adapted to its use. At various points are the so-called eyes, each of 

 which is connected by gubernaculum lines of spiral tissue connect- 

 ing with the central part of the stem ( Reinsch) . 



A thin section of the potato discloses a beautiful network of 

 connective fibrous tissue, looking much like the meshes of a com- 

 mon fish net. This net work is filled with starch grains in all 

 stages of development, from the most minute granules to the large 

 concentrically marked pear-shaped grains. Under polarized light 

 these sections of raw potatoes form one of the most beautiful objects 

 witnessed under the microscope, comparing favorably with an Italian 

 sunset or a rainbow. That such a lovely object can be. found in the 

 homely domains of the kitchen is ignored by the queens both of the 

 I)arlor and kitchen ! 



