Dr. Scouler on the Introduction of the Potato into Scotland. 227 



published in 1598, we have an excellent wood engraving of the potato 

 plant, and its culture appears to have been well understood on the 

 continent for several years before that date — the following is his state- 

 ment : — " hyberno tempore radices eximebantur ue putrescerent ver- 

 nalique tempore rursus terras committebantur, ast nunc non item, si 

 quidem tot se tuberibus propaget, ita ut ad unam plantam hiberno tem- 

 pore eratam ultra quadraginta tubera notarem, quamvis etiam ex rarimis 

 reclinatis terra tectis Burgundi propagare solent." It is right, however, 

 to add, that he states the potato was introduced by the English from 

 Virginia. In whatever way this notion may have arisen, we have already 

 seen that it had been well known in Italy before the voyage of Raleigh 

 to America. The names by which it was known on the continent seem 

 to point out that it was transmitted from Spain to Italy, and from thence 

 to Germany, thus the Spaniards in Peru gave it the name of "turmas de 

 tierra" or truffles, and hence the Italian " tartufi'oli," and the German 

 " kartoffeln." 



Although the potato was cultivated on the continent previous to its 

 introduction into Ireland, yet it was in the latter country that its impor- 

 tance was first appreciated. The earliest notice with which I am 

 acquainted respecting the general culture of the potato occurs in the 

 Political Analomy of Ireland, by Sir William Petty, which was published 

 in 1672. He remarks, speaking of the Irish, "their laziness seems to 

 me to proceed rather from want of employment and encouragement to 

 work, than from natural abundance of flegm in their bowels and blood ; 

 for what need they to work who can content themselves with potatoes, 

 whereof so the labour of one man can feed forty; and with milk, whereof 

 one cow, in summer time, will give meat and drink enough for three men; 

 and when they can every where gather cockles, oysters, mussels, crabs, 

 &c.; with boats, nets, and angles, or the art of fishing; and can build a 

 house in three days." From this time the use, or rather abuse of the 

 potato, became more and more general in Ireland, and Threlkeld, in his 

 Irish Herbal, after a quaint panegyric on the potato, observes " dearth 

 of bread can never afi"ect us much while this crop answers as it has done 

 this year, 1725." 



The progress of the culture of the potato was both later and slower in 

 Scotland than in Ireland, and it seems to have spread from west to east, 

 that is from those parts of the coast opposite Ireland. The earliest 

 notice of the plant by any Scottish writer, is in Sutherland's Catalogue 

 (1683), of plants cultivated in the Edinburgh Botanic Garden. In this 

 case it is to be considered as a botanical curiosity rather than as a plant of 

 any economical importance. The earliest notice with which I am 

 acquainted occurs in Martin's Western Islands (1703), from which it 

 appears that they constituted, even then, an important article of food to 

 the Islanders, and also renders it probable that they had been originally 

 imported from Ireland. It was many years after their introduction into 

 the Western Islands before they became an object of attention to tho 



