138 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



varieties to which these improvements have led, that 

 a succession is furnished fresh out of the earth for 

 nearly six months in the year. The early sorts have 

 been the reward of horticultural skill now so success- 

 fully exerted in this country ; under the shelter of 

 frames, with careful management, the tender young 

 plants are made to struggle through ungenial weather, 

 and to produce tubers at the earliest approach of 

 summer. 



The culture of the potato in the rest of Europe 

 appears to have attained to no great extent until 

 during the last century. In the latter half of this 

 period it was made in more than one country a sub- 

 ject of interest and inquiry. Several works published 

 about that time, treating on its culture, are to be found 

 in both the French and German languages. From 

 one of these* we learn that the potato was introduced 

 from England into the Netherlands ; and was thence 

 transplanted into some parts of Germany. It was 

 first cultivated in Sweden in J 720, but, notwithstand- 

 ing the exertions and recommendations of Linnaeus, 

 it did not come into general cultivation until 1764, 

 when a royal edict was published ibr the encourage- 

 ment of this branch of husbandry. 



The potato was still unknown to the agriculturists 

 of Saxony so late as 1740 ; but so rapidly did its 

 culture increase, that less than thirty years after the 

 above date, a small detachment of the French army, 

 while in that country, having its supplies wholly cut 

 ofF, the soldiers subsisted for eight or ten days entirely 

 on potatoes obtained 'from the fields ; nor was this 

 manner of living considered among them as by any 

 means a hardship. 



The Swiss discovered the value of this cultivation 

 about the same period in which it was introduced 



* Trait i de la Nature de la Culture et de 1'Utilite des Pom- 

 mes de Terre, par Un Ami des Hommes, 1771. 



