50 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



by the botanist Weddell,^ who has carefully explored 

 Bolivia and the neighbouring countries. " When we 

 reflect/' he says, " that on the arid Cordillera the Indians 

 often establish their Httle plots of cultivation on points 

 which would appear almost inaccessible to the great 

 majority of our European farmers, we understand that 

 when a traveller chances to visit one of these cultivated 

 plots, long since abandoned, and finds there a plant of 

 Solanum tuberosum which has accidentally persisted, he 

 gathers it in the belief that it is really wild ; but of this 

 there is no proof." 



We come now to facts. These abound concerning the 

 wild character of the plant in Chili. 



In 1822, Alexander Caldcleugh,^ English consul, 

 sent to the London Horticultural Society some tubers of 

 the potato which he had found in the ravines round 

 Valparaiso. He sa3^s that these tubers are small, some- 

 times red, sometimes yellowish, and rather bitter in taste.^ 

 " I believe," he adds, " that this plant exists over a great 

 extent of the littoral, for it is found in the south of 

 Chili, where the aborigines call it maglia!' This is 

 probably a confusion with >S^. maglia of botanists ; but 

 the tubers of Valparaiso, planted in London, produced 

 the true potato, as we see from a glance at Sabine's 

 coloured figure in the Transactions of the Horticultural 

 Society. The cultivation of this plant was continued 

 for some time, and Lindley certified anew, in 1847, its 

 identity with the common potato.^ Here is the account 

 of the Valparaiso plant, given by a traveller to Sir 

 William Hooker.^ "I noticed the potato on the shore 

 as far as fifteen leagues to the north of this town, and to 

 the south, but I do not know how far it extends. It 



' Clitoris. Andina, in 4to, p. 103. 



* Sabine, Trans. Hort. Soc, vol. v. p. 24-9. 



' No importance should be attached to this flavonr, nor to the watery 

 quality of some of the tubers, since in hot countries, even in the south 

 of Europe, the potato is often poor. The tubers, which are subter- 

 ranean ramifications of the stem, are turned green by exposure to tJio 

 light, and are rendered bitter. 



* Journal Hort. Soc, vol. iii. p. 66. 



* Hooker, Botanical Miscellajiies, 1S31, vol. ii. p. 203. 



