PROF. C. U. SHEPHARD'S ADDRESS. 271 



sessed in this plant, prior to the year 1840 ! For the potato is 

 a vegetable which the rich man knows not how to forego, and 

 one which places the poor man above want. With a shelter 

 from the weather, and one or two acres of ground to plant with 

 this tuber, man may subsist at almost any distance from the 

 miller, the baker, the butcher, and, I may almost add, the doctor. 

 It suits all tastes, flourishes in nearly all climates, and is emi- 

 nently nutritious and healthful. Its cultivation demands but 

 little labor, and when the earth has ripened the tubers, they are 

 harvested without trouble, and cooked without expense. A few 

 faggots in summer will boil them, and, in winter, the necessary 

 heat is supplied without expense. There is no .waste of time in 

 the processes of milling, sifting, kneading, baking, seasoning, 

 jointing or carving. There is nothing deficient nor superfluous 

 in a well-boiled potato. As soon as it is cooked, it opens by 

 chinks, lets fall its thin pellicle upon the platter, and, with a lit- 

 tle salt, butter, or milk, is ready for the unfastidious appetite of 

 the hungry man. Start not back with surprise, at the idea of 

 subsisting upon the potato alone, ye who think it necessary to 

 load your tables with all the dainty viands of the market, — with 

 fish, flesh and fowl, seasoned with oils and spices, and eaten 

 perhaps with wines, — start not back, I say, with feigned disgust, 

 until you are able to display, in your own pampered persons, a 

 firmer muscle, a more beau-ideal outline, and a healthier red, 

 than the potato-fed peasantry of Ireland and Scotland once 

 showed you. as you passed their cabin doors ! No ; the chem- 

 ical physiologist will tell you, that the well-ripened potato, 

 when properly cooked, contains every element that man requires 

 for nutrition ; and in the best proportions in which they are 

 found in any plant whatever. There is the abounding supply of 

 starch, for enabling him to maintain the process of breathing, 

 and for generating the necessary warmth of body ; there is the 

 nitrogen, for contributing to the growth and renovation of organs ; 

 the lime and the phosphorus, for the bones, and all the salts 

 which a healthy circulation demands. In fine, the potato may 

 well be called the universal plant; and the disease under which 

 it now labors is, therefore, an universal calamity. If any agri- 

 cultural institution should ever be so fortunate as to make us 



