THE POTATO. 131 



The zeal of the Royal Society to promote the 

 growth of this vegetable failed for a long time to 

 exercise much influence upon the habits of the na- 

 tion; and, if we may judge from the opinions which 

 were published respecting the plant, we must con- 

 clude that the necessities of the poor of Ireland, 

 who have ever been left too entirely to their own 

 resources, did more to promote the culture of po- 

 tatoes than all the labours of the learned, and the 

 philanthropy of the patriotic. At the end of the 

 seventeenth century one wr-iter on gardening, indeed, 

 admits that ' potatoes are much used in Ireland and 

 America as bread, and may be propagated with 

 advantage to poor people.' W'oolridge, who wrote 

 in 1687, twenty-four years after the appeal of Mr 

 Buckland, describes potatoes as being very useful 

 in ' forcing fruits,' stating that they are planted in 

 several places in this country to good advantage ; 

 he adds, ' I do not hear that it has been yet essayed 

 whether they may not be propagated in great quan- 

 tities for the use of swine and other cattle. The cel- 

 ebrated Ray, who began to publish his ' Historia 

 Plantarum' in 1686, takes no farther notice of this 

 vegetable than by saying that it is dressed in the same 

 manner as Spanish batatas. Merritt, who, wrote in 

 the following year, records that potatoes were then 

 cultivated in many fields in Wales, but in what part 

 of the principality he does not mention. 



On the other hand, Lisle, who made observations 

 on husbandry from the year 1694 to 1722, is wholly 

 silent about the potato. In Mortimer's Gardener's 

 Kalendar for 1708, this plant is directed to be sown 

 in February; and, as if its character had not been 

 generally known, it is added that ' the root is very 

 near the nature of the Jerusalem artichoke, although 

 not so good and wholesome, but that it may prove 

 good for swine.' In the Complete Gardener, by the 



