HISTORY OF THE POTATO. 7 



Phillips further remarks: " Mr. Coke, of Holkham, in 

 Norfolk, permitted the poor to plant potatoes in his young 

 plantations, and found the cultivation beneficial to the 

 trees. . . . Mr. Abdy, of Essex, grubbed a wood, arid 

 planted potatoes, which answered well. It would be 

 highly profitable to allow the poor to plant baulks and 

 headlands in cornfields with potatoes." 



John Evelyn's Advice. John Evelyn, in his 

 " Kalendarium Hortense ; or, the Gard'ner's Almanac; 

 Directing what He is to do Monthly, throughout the 

 Year," published in 1664, evidently does not hold the 

 potato in very high estimation, for in his directions for 

 the month of February, he briefly says, " And plant your 

 potatoes in your worst ground." In the November in- 

 structions, he further remarks: "Take up you potatoes 

 for winter spending, there will be enough remain for stocks, 

 though never so exactly gather'd." 



Lord Bacon on Potatoes. The celebrated philo- 

 sopher has the following quaint reference to the potato in 

 his "Natural History": "If," says he, " potado fsic] 

 roots be set in a pot filled with earth, and then the pot 

 with earth be set likewise within the ground, some two or 

 three inches, the roots will grow greater than ordinary. 

 The cause may be, for that having earth enough within 

 the pot to nourish them, and then being stopped by the 

 bottome of the pot from putting strings downward, they 

 must needs grow greater in breadth and thieknesse. And 

 it may be that all seed roots, potted and so set into the 

 earth, will prosper the better." 



Potatoes in Puritan Times. In "JDpnaldson's 

 British Agriculture," the author states that "The Puri- 

 tans condemned the_ use of the potato, as the plant was 

 not mentioned in the Bible, and as that gloomy enthu- 

 siasm ruled for some time, it may have hindered the com- 

 modities of life from a general diffusion." 



