286 



THE YEAR-BOOK OF AGRICULTURE. 



Dioscorea Batatas, or the New Chinese Potato. 



THIS new potato was, several 

 years since, transmitted, along 

 with other useful and promising 

 agricultural plants, by M. de 

 Montigny, who te- consul for 

 France at the port of Shanghai, 

 in Northern China. The name 

 which he bestowed upon it was 

 that of Dioscorea japonica; but 

 it has been considered that Dios- 

 corea batatas would not only be a 

 more popular and familiar, but a 

 more appropriate name ; seeing 

 that although the plant may in 

 its origin be Japanese, of its cul- 

 tivation in that dark interior we 

 know literally nothing ; while its 

 culture in the northern parts of 

 China, and in latitudes assimi- 

 lated to our own in point of cli- 

 mate, being a fact quite accessible 

 in all its details, ought not to be 

 submerged under the name that 

 associates it with the very exclu- 

 sive territory of Japan. The 

 plant, or rather tuber, is doubt- 

 less a dioscorea or yam ; and 

 yams in general are tropical pro- 

 ductions. The various species 

 D. alata, sativa, and aculcata 

 yield tubers, which in warm 

 countries are substituted for the 

 potato; and the order is accused 

 of combining with the farina- 

 ceous matter existing in its tubers 

 a prevalent acridity, which is 

 sometimes even purgative. Still 

 a few genera are found in tempe- 

 rate climates. Yet all this is 

 nothing. The Solatium tuberosum, 

 our cultivated potato itself, is, it 

 is well known, quite a poisonous 

 plant in a state of nature. Cul- 

 ture may readily ameliorate all 

 this acridity ; and, if we can cre- 

 dit all that has been said in favor 

 of the new importation, has far 

 more than done so. Certain it 

 is, that it holds the same place 



in the north of China, and is found to comprise the same nutritive properties, as the potato in 

 this country. M. de Montigny has stated that the Chinese at taking up the crop set aside all 

 the smaller roots for seed. It is well known that this is a practice now preferred by our 

 market-gardeners to cutting large potatoes into sets, simply because they like a juicy set, 



