758 



POTATO. 



land was retarded by the opinions of the different 

 \vriteis on agricultural subjects, already mentioned. 

 Famine at last gave the great impulse to the culti- 

 vation of this root, and during the latter part of 

 the ISth century, it gradually spread over the 

 country, and its excellent qualities became gene- 

 rally understood. 



The Netherlands received the potato from Eng- 

 land; and from thence it found its way into differ- 

 ent parts of Germany. It was very late before it 

 came into general cultivation in Sweden and Den- 

 mark, and even Saxony, but in all these countries 

 it is universally used at present. In Switzerland 

 potatoes seem to have form introduced about the 

 year 1720; they now been a principal article of 

 food there. Poland is perhaps as remarkable as 

 Ireland for their extensive cultivation. Of late 

 years they have been introduced into the British 

 settlements in India, and, as bishop Heber remarks, 

 " with great prospect of success. Many places 

 have been found suited for their culture, and though 

 the Hindoos at first were unwilling to adopt the 

 use of them, their prejudices have been gradually 

 overcome, and potatoes-may some time hence rival 

 rice in its general utility among them." " It is only 

 within these forty years that any particular atten- 

 tion has been paid in France to the cultivation of 

 potatoes. They were long regarded as an unwhole- 

 some plant, and only fit to be eaten by cattle and 

 the most wretched of human beings. It is proba- 

 ble that the French had only cultivated the inferior 

 sorts, and did not know that better kinds could be 

 procured. Parmentier, so distinguished by his zeal 

 for chemistry, was the first who made any success- 

 ful exertions in behalf of this decried and unpopu- 

 lar plant. He thought that the best plan to intro- 

 duce it into general use was to make it popular 

 with the higher orders. For that purpose, in 1785. 

 he presented Louis XVI. with a nosegay made with 

 the flowers of the potato, and the sovereign gra- 

 ciously received the emblem of a plant, the most 

 likely of any, to guarantee his subjects against the 

 horrors of famine. This ingenious mode of bring- 

 ing a plant, which had hitherto been so much des- 

 pised, into fashion, was eminently successful. The 

 courtiers, always ready to flatter the taste and 

 wishes of their monarch, hastened to cultivate an 

 article honoured with his regard : and thus France, 

 in a great measure, owes the more extensive cul- 

 ture of potatoes to courtly flattery*." 



The potato, because it grows under ground, has 

 been usually called a root, but improperly. It more 

 nearly resembles a kind of underground fruit ; and, 

 in conformity with this idea, the French have given 

 it the name of pomme de terre or ground-apple. 

 The potato, in fact, belongs to the class of plants 

 called tuberous-rooted, or those having roundish 

 knobs intermixed with the fibres, which constitute 

 the real roots that draw nourishment from the 

 earth. These tubers or knobs have been consid- 

 ered as so many under ground stems, enlarged by 

 a deposition of farinaceous matter; and when, by 

 any chance, they lose while growing their covering 

 of earth, and continue to grow exposed to the light, 

 they assume the same colour as the rest of the 

 plant. But these may rather be considered as a 

 mode of increase analogous to the viviparous pro- 

 duction of a part of the animal kingdom; while 

 the seed or apple from the flower corresponds to 

 the oviparous propagation of birds. Tuberous- 



* Sir John Sinclair. 



rooted plants, therefore, are furnished by nature 

 with a two-fold mode of increase. The potato, 

 besides, may be considered a perennial plant, as it 

 may continue to spring up for many successive 

 years on the same spot. It belongs to the genus 

 of plants called Solanum, many species of which, 

 such as the nightshade, are extremely poisonous. 

 In Jamaica, the root of one species is a violent 

 purgative, and a spoonful or two is used by the 

 natives as a dose. It might startle a person at first 

 to find the principal food of a large portion of 

 mankind, drawn from a vegetable belonging to so 

 poisonous a group. Two circumstances also would 

 seem to prove that a portion of deleterious matter 

 does actually exist in the potato. One is, that 

 potatoes, whether in their parent bed or in the pit 

 in which they were preserved after being dug up, 

 if they are uncovered, take the wind (as it is called), 

 and become unwholesome food for men, occasioning 

 sickness, and greatly disordering the body. They 

 are easily known by being of a different colour 

 from those of the same crop which lie at a greater 

 depth. These surface potatoes, however, may be 

 used as seed, and besides are not unwholesome for 

 pigs. The other circumstance is, that the liquid 

 contained in raw potatoes must contain some mat- 

 ter hostile to animal life, as cattle and hogs have been 

 greatly injured by drinking of the water in which 

 they have been boiled. To counterbalance this, 

 on the other hand, Sir John Sinclair maintains that 

 substances noxious to animal life are generally 

 beneficial to vegetable life; and with regard to the 

 juices of the potato in particular, that they contain 

 .various substances favourable to vegetation, which 

 maybe rendered of great use in the irrigation of grass 

 lands. In different quarters of the globe, whole 

 nations subsist on roots which are deadly poison in 

 their unprepared state, but which become safe and 

 nutritious when cooked by fire. The most remark- 

 able examples of this are found in the natives of 

 the Molucca and Society islands, and the Indians of 

 South America. In the island of Hayti, the juice 

 of the very root which is used when dressed in the 

 same way as we employ the potato, has been often 

 swallowed by some of the miserable natives to put 

 an end to their existence. Oviedo relates, as an 

 eye witness, that these unhappy wretches, who, 

 like many African ti ihe?, preferred death to slavery, 

 united together by fifties to swallow at once the 

 poisonous juice of the Jatropha. 



All vegetable productions affording food are 

 found to contain, in some proportion or other, a 

 farinaceous or granular substance devoid of fibre, 

 which, when dried, may be ground or pounded into 

 flour or meal; and which, if boiled in water, will 

 form with it a pulpy matter. The vegetable sub- 

 stances which contain most of this matter are seeds 

 and tubers, these parts of the plant being intended 

 by nature to contain a store of food, as it were, 

 for the young germ, sufficient to nourish it until 

 the production of members or instruments capable 

 of collecting nutriment for it after its exclusion, 

 precisely analogous to the provision of yolk laid up 

 in the eg of a bird for the young being inclosed in 

 it. From accurate chemical examination, it has 

 been found that in every 100 parts of the potato, 

 there are about 70 parts of water and 30 of potato- 

 meal, which is a powder of a greyish colour, hav- 

 ing the taste of the raw root. This meal being 

 submitted to further analysis, is found to be com- 

 posed of three different substances.- 1st, Starch 

 or fecula, 16 parts; 2d, Leafy or fibrous matter, 9 



