164 AMERICAN HUSBANDRY. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE POTATO. 



Varieties. — Soil.— Cultivation. — Modes of Planting. — Early Po- 

 tatoes. — Experiments in Planting. — Great Crops.— I)ise£ sea. 

 — New Kinds. — Nutritive Properties. 



If the Old World has given to the New the inval- 

 uable grain plants, wheat, barley, and oats, the New 

 has abundantly repaid the debt with their stoad, 

 maize or Indian corn, and the Solanum tuberosum, or 

 common potato. The potato is indeed mentioned 

 by writers previous to the discovery of America; 

 but the root alluded to is the sweet potato, a native 

 of the East Indies, and early cultivated in the warmer 

 parts of Europe. Tlius, when Shakspeare makes 

 that type of good living, the jolly Falstaff, exclaim, 

 " Now let the sky rain potatoes," we are not to in- 

 fer that he had ever heard of " Irish whites," or that 

 his aspirations extended to modern " pink-eyes." 

 The putato was early introduced from South Amer- 

 ica into Spain, and was brought from Virginia by Sir 

 Walter Raleigh, and planted in Ireland, wJiere it soon 

 became a general favourite, and obtained the dis- 

 tinction which it still maintains. In England, and 

 Europe generally, it spread more gradually ; and it 

 is but a few years since its merits as an article of 

 food were firmly established in France. The pota- 

 to, however, seems destined to make the circuit of 

 the globe ; and, as an article of food for man, it stands 

 at the head of all the roots, and not much below the 

 highest of all the cerealia, wheat. Perhaps there is 

 no plant cultivated in the temperate latitudes, from 

 which so much food per acre, adaptou to the sub- 

 sistence of man, can be procured, as from the potato. 



