110 MEMOIRS OP 



so that there can be no temerity in predicting, that he 

 will reflect back upon his house much greater lustre than 

 he has received from it ; and that these researches, which, 

 perhaps, excited the pity and contempt of some of his con- 

 temporaries, will make his name resound, at an age to 

 which his rank and his ancestiy alone would not have trans- 

 mitted it. The history of thirty centuries clearly teaches 

 us, that great and useful truths are the sole durable inheri- 

 tance which man can leave behind him." 



The next in the list of great names is that of Pallas, 

 the enlightened and sagacious traveller of the north of Asia, 

 the inhabitant of the Crimea, and the learned and indefati- 

 gable naturalist. 



The eloges of M. Parmentier and Count Rumford are 

 combined, and commence with a sort of introduction to the 

 useful labours of each ; labours which bore so strongly on 

 the means of affording warmth and nourishment to the 

 poorer classes. The former, who had learned the value of 

 the potato as an article of food in the prisons of Germany : 

 overcame the prejudices entertained against them in France, 

 where they were said to produce leprosy, fevers, and no one 

 knows what diseases. His mode of rendering them popu- 

 lar and desirable was curious ; for he began by cultivating 

 them in the open fields, and causing them to be carefully 

 guarded by day only : he was but too happy when he was 

 informed, that this apparent caution had induced depreda- 

 tion by night. He then obtained from the king of France 

 the favour of wearing a bunch of potato blossoms in the 

 button-hole of his coat, at a solemn fete ; and nothing more 

 was required to cause some of the great lords of the king- 

 dom to order its cultivation on their estates. Not, however, 

 till the last years of his life, was he completely successful : 

 and during the great Revolution he was rejected as a ma- 

 gistrate, because he had invented potatoes. 



Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, was an American 

 by birth, and served as a royalist in the war between Ameri- 

 ca and England. After the peace he came to the latter 

 country, where he was knighted by George III., and recom- 

 mended by that sovereign to the protection of the Elector 

 of Bavaria, at whose court he rose to the highest dignities. 

 It was then that he turned his attention to the state of the 



