42 COMMERCIAL BOTANY. 



whence the fruits reach the London market, and are largely 

 used for pickling. It has been stated that " in the market- 

 garden district of Sandy, in Bedfordshire, ten thousand 

 bushels of pickling cucumbers have been sent away in one 

 week." Cucumber cultivation, therefore, represents a large 

 sum of money in the aggregate. In the early season they 

 realise high prices, but in August and September they are 

 not unfrequently sold at the rate of a penny a dozen. 



This account of cultivated plants would scarcely be com- 

 plete without some notice of the extension of the POTATO 

 (Solanumtuberosum) cultivation in England, and though much 

 of this was effected before the period of which we have to treat, 

 nevertheless a very large number of the best recognised varie- 

 ties of the potato are of i*ecent origin. When we consider to 

 what perfection cultivation has brought this vegetable, which 

 in its native Chilian form is a globular waxy tuber not larger 

 than a walnut, and of which a well-known writer prophesied 

 in 1708 " that it might prove good for swine," we may 

 perhaps be surprised that even more has not been done 

 during the last fifty years in introducing and establishing 

 entirely new sources of food, such, for instance, as allied 

 species of Solanum, that might under cultivation produce 

 edible tubers. Something in this direction has indeed been 

 done quite recently by Mr. J. G. Baker, F.R.S., who, in a 

 paper on " Tuber-bearing Species of Solanum," read before 

 the Linnean Society in 1884, and published in the Journal 

 of that Society, vol. xx., p. 489, pointed out that Solanum 

 Maglia a close ally to S. tuberosum, and like it a native of 

 Chili produced similar tubers. The plant, indeed, seems 

 to have been introduced to the Royal Horticultural Society's 

 garden at Chiswick in 1822 and to have been mistaken for 

 the true potato. S. Commersoni, a native of Uruguay, 

 Buenos Ayres, and the Argentine Republic, also produces 

 tubers, as well as S. Jamesii from the mountains of the 

 South-west United States and Mexico. 



