Book I. ESCULENT ROOTS. 623 



them into the open garden. As the plants come up, and advance from three to six inches in growth, hoe 

 some earth to the stems, cutting down all waeds. When they begin to send forth runners, place suitable 

 supports to each row ; and conduct the tendrils to the sticks or lines, turning them in a contrary di- 

 rection to the sun. The ascending plants will soon come into flower, podding at the joints in long 

 succession. They are so prolific that the returns from three sowings, in May, June, and July, will last from 

 July till October. 



3639. Taking the crop. Gather the pods, both from dwarfs and runners, while they are young, 

 fleshy, brittle, and tender ; for then are they in highest perfection for the table ; and the plants will 

 bear more fully, and last longer in fruit, under a course of clean gathering, not leaving any superabundant 

 pods to grow old. 



3640. To save seed. Either sow a portion for that object, or leave rows wholly ungathered of the main 

 crops, or preserve a sufficiency of good pods promiscuously. The beans saved should be the first-fruits of 

 a crop sown at a period which throws the entire course of growth into the finest part of summer. Let 

 them hang on the stalks till they ripen fully in August and September ; then let the haulm be pulled up, 

 and placed in the sun, to dry and harden the seed, which should be afterwards cleared out of the husks, 

 bagged up, and housed. 



3641. Forwarding an early crop. The kidneybean is often partially forced in hot-houses or frames, 

 with a view to its fruiting in the open garden ; and supplies of green pods are also kept up throughout 

 the winter and spring months, by forcing in hot-houses and pits ; for the details of both practices, see 

 Ch. VII. Sect.X. 



3642. Insects. The pea, bean, and kidneybean are liable to the attacks of various insects, ^gg 

 especially the aphides in dry seasons. The Bruchus Pisi {fig. 468.) is particularly destructive to 

 the pea, and its larva (a) is "often found in the ripe pod. In gardens, the only mode of keeping 

 them under, is to cut off" the part infested, and remove it with the insects attached. When 

 early crops are newly sown or planted, mice will burrow for and eat the seed, and when it be- 

 gins to penetrate the soil, it is attacked by snails and slugs, and sometimes by birds. The usual 

 means of defeating the attacks of these and other enemies, must always be early resorted to by 

 the gardener. 



Sect. III. Esculent Roots. 



3643. The esculent-rooted culinary plants delight in a light, rather sandy, deep, and 

 well stirred soil. It must be dry at bottom ; but a moist atmosphere and moderate tem- 

 perature are greatly favorable to the growth of almost the whole of the plants we have in- 

 cluded in this section. Hence the excellence of the potatoe crop in Ireland, and the size 

 to which turnips, carrots, parsneps, &c. attain in Britain and Holland, compared to what 

 they do in France and Germany. The space occupied in the kitchen-garden by this class 

 of vegetables is considerable ; but as it is regulated in some degree by the quantity of the 

 more common roots grown in the farm for culinary use, it is less subject to estimation. 

 In most gardens, however, the esculent roots taken together may occupy as much space 

 as the legumes. In cottage gardens, they may be considered as occupying one half of 

 the whole, to be in part succeeded by winter greens. 



Subsect. 1. Potatoe. — Solanum tuberosum, L. {Bauh. Prod. 89. t. 89.) Pent. Dig. L. 

 and Solanece, B. P. Pomme de Terre, Fr. ; Cartoffel, Ger. ; and Porno di Terra, Ital. 



3644. The potatoe is a perennial plant, well known for the tubers produced by its roots. 

 The stem rises generally from two to three feet in height, with long and weak branches, 

 furnished with leaves interruptedly pinnate. The flowers are white or tinged with purple. 

 The fruit is a berry of the size of a plum, green at first, but black when ripe, and con- 

 taining many small, flat, roundish, white seeds. It is supposed to be a native of South 

 America, but Humboldt is very doubtful if that can be proved : he admits, however, that 

 it is naturalised there in some situations. 



3645. Sabine and Lambert consider it as satisfactorily proved, that it is to be found both 

 in elevated places in the tropical regions, and in the more temperate districts of the western 

 coasts of South America. {Hart. Trans, v. 250. ; Jour. B. Instit. x. 25.) Some 

 tubers, said to be of the wild potatoe, have been received by the Horticultural Society, and 

 grown by them ; they differ so little from those of the cultivated potatoe, that Sabine con- 

 jectures, " that the original cultivators of this vegetable did not exercise either much art 

 or patience in the production of their garden-potatoes." (Hort. Trans, v. 257.) 



3646. SW Joseph Banks (Hort. Trans, i. 8.) considers that the potatoe was first brought 

 into Europe from the mountainous parts of South America, in the neighborhood of 

 Quito, where they were called papas, to Spain, in the early part of the sixteenth century. 

 From Spain, where they were called battatas, they appear to have found their way first to 

 Italy, where they received the same name with the truffle, taratovfii. The potatoe was 

 received by Clusius, at Vienna, in 1598, from the governor of Mons, in Hainault, who 

 had procured it the year before from one of the attendants of the Pope's legate, under the 

 name of taratoufli, and learned from him, that it was then in use in Italy. In Germany 

 it received the name of cartoffel, and spread rapidly even in Clusius's time. To England 

 the potatoe found its way by a different route, being brought from Virginia by the colon- 

 ists sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584, and who returned in July 1586, and 

 " probably," according to Sir Joseph Banks, "brought with them the potatoe." Thomas 

 Herriot, in a report on the country, published in De Bry's Collection of Voyages (vol. i. 

 p. 17.), describes a plant called openawk, with "roots as large as a walnut, and others 

 much larger ; they grow in damp soil, many hanging together, as if fixed on ropes ; they 

 are good food, either boiled or roasted." 



3647. Gerrard, in his Herbal, published in 1597, gives a figure of the potatoe, under 



